“Making love to his exhaust” - Christian Horner stunned by McLaren strength
Christian Horner stunned by strength of ‘love making’ McLarens
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted to being blown away by McLaren’s dominance at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Lando Norris led home a comfortable McLaren 1-2 at the Red Bull Ring as he impressively withstood a race-long challenge from teammate Oscar Piastri.
Horner was left baffled by the level of performance from McLaren, as well as being impressed by their car’s ability to run so close to each other for such long periods.
“What's truly impressive, and for me I can't see any other team being able to do it, is when you look at how close Oscar is able to run behind Lando with a car fat on fuel at the beginning of the race,” Horner told reports in Austria, where Crash.net were on the ground.
“He's basically making love to his fucking exhaust pipe for lap after lap after lap, and the tyres are not dying. I mean, that to me is, you know, that is their advantage.
“They've managed to create a car that really protects its tyres very well and obviously has a good balance. I can't see any other car that would be able to follow that closely and not grain the front tyres or the rear tyres. I don't really understand.”
‘Race to forget’ for Red Bull
Red Bull’s 77-race point-scoring streak came to an end at their home race as Max Verstappen was taken out on the opening lap and Yuki Tsunoda finished last.
Over the last three races, Red Bull have scored just 19 points and have even been outperformed by Sauber.
Verstappen is now 61 points adrift of championship leader Oscar Piastri, while Red Bull are fourth in the constructors’ championship, a whopping 255 points behind leaders McLaren.
“That was a home race to forget,” Horner admitted. “We got unlucky [in qualifying], that then puts us in a position where you're in the crash zone, and Kimi just lost it in spectacular fashion up at Turn 3.
“Max was basically through the corner and getting back on the power, and just got wiped out, so, an unfortunate mistake by Kimi, he apologised to Max, but, you know, for us it killed our afternoon.”
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