Christian Horner sends McLaren ‘self-interest’ warning about battling drivers
Christian Horner has a warning for McLaren amid the F1 world championship battle.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner has warned McLaren that their drivers could start acting with “self-interest” as the F1 championship battle hots up.
Max Verstappen beat the McLaren’s to take a dominant victory at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after pulling off an audacious move to overtake pole-sitter Oscar Piastri around the outside of the first corner.
The Dutchman controlled the race from there and was able to easily pull clear of the McLarens during a 10-lap sprint to the chequered flag after a late Safety Car bunched the field up.
Red Bull team principal Horner questioned McLaren’s decision to allow their drivers to battle over second place at the end of the race, despite Piastri being on much older tyres than Lando Norris, who pitted under the second Safety Car.
“Oscar had obviously pushed quite hard early on and you could see he was starting to get a little bit of graining on that front-right," Horner said.
"And so, it was borderline whether it was going to be a two-stop or one-stop. They obviously pulled the trigger on the two-stop, but it dropped you out because of the length of the pitlane here being 27 seconds.
"It put him into a world of pain traffic-wise. And so Max was then able to keep running and the deg was super low. And even with Lando in clean air behind, we were able to manage quite easily a nine-, nine-and-a-half-second gap.
"The VSC came out, and the pitstop was pretty straightforward. Oscar pitted again on his strategy, which sort of neutralised him, but by that time he'd used both of his hard tyres.
"And then that final safety car, obviously Max pitted, Lando pitted, but it dropped him behind Oscar, which was, you know, you've got two drivers that are fighting for a world championship.
"At some point, self-interest will always outweigh team interest. That's the conflict. So, they did a good job to not make contact. It was commendable that they were allowed to race, but you could see it got pretty close.”
Verstappen's second win of the season has seen him close to within 22 points of championship leader Piastri, who is 13 points clear of Norris.
A sign of weakness at McLaren?
McLaren’s decision not to call for Piastri to move aside at the Safety Car restart, which enabled Verstappen to maintain his lead, drew criticism from 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve.
”They show weakness. Basically, they don't show the strength that Red Bull are always showing year after year,” Villeneuve told Sky Sports F1.
"It's as if they're afraid to be aggressive in trying to win the Drivers' Championship, and they're afraid to go against Piastri. It's really, really odd.
"Piastri messed up that first corner. He got caught out sleeping. He should never have come out of the corner second and then he didn't have the pace, which was odd. Norris had more pace.
"On the restart, McLaren knew that it was a matter of laps before Norris would have taken Piastri with the tyre difference, it was obvious.
"100 per cent sure he would get ahead, so why make him lose three laps instead of giving him a shot at Verstappen?
"Because Verstappen is in for the championship. You don't want to give Verstappen wins. That's more points for him in the Drivers' Championship.
"They seem to be happy with second and third. Maclaren has a car where a good weekend means first and second. Anything less is a bit disappointing. First and third is fairly acceptable, but they seem happy with second and third.
"That weakness thing. You can see it also in the strategy. When Norris went long, why do you pit him?
"You made the decision to go long. You stay on the track. Your pace is still good. So why pit a little bit early? It's as if you're afraid to go for it.
"They didn't take advantage of the virtual safety car. At the end of the day, with the other safety car, it didn't make a difference. But still, it shows that lack of 'let's go for it.'"
But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella defended his side’s decision-making.
"It was definitely a thought [to swap positions],” he told Sky Sports F1.
"We want to have Oscar having his own chances at the restart. So we assumed the principle if Lando was able to pass Max he should have been able to pass Oscar pretty easily considering he was on fairly old tyres.
"In reality, if the pace delta was enough things would have taken care of themselves. We are happy with how things unfolded.
"Both drivers are happy, think that was fair and that's the way we go racing."
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