Christian Horner has revealed the “stress” caused by Mick Schumacher holding up Max Verstappen as his victory in the US Grand Prix hung in the balance.
The Dutch driver held off a late push from Lewis Hamilton to open up a 12-point lead in the drivers’ championship.
But Red Bull felt the nerves right up until the final lap as the seven-time world champion closed in on Verstappen, with Horner explaining the difficulty in accounting for the backmarkers.
“It’s very difficult to factor into your strategy the backmarkers,” said Horner. “We lost a lot of time behind Yuki [Tsunoda] and then Mick Schumacher was quite costly on the last couple of laps.
“I thought that was going to cost us the victory because he held Max through the whole sector. But thankfully we did pick up the DRS on the start/finish straight, which at least gave Max a little bit of breathing room into turn one. But it certainly added to the stress on the pit wall.”
Verstappen benefited from DRS after lapping Schumacher, Hamilton was unable to pull within reach to gain the same advantage.
Despite starting from pole, Verstappen lost the lead early on to Hamilton and was unable to pass, leading to an aggressive strategy to pit early.
“I think we were quicker on the medium tyre and Max could see that Lewis was sliding around a lot and we were in danger of overheating our own tyres by just being stuck,” said Horner. “So we decided to take the gamble and bank some free air. It was then going to put us under pressure, for sure, at the end of the race.”
Red Bull performed an excellent strategy by denying Hamilton any chance of running more than three laps longer than Verstappen as Sergio Perez was brought in for his first pit stop to ensure Mercedes covered the threat of the second Red Bull.
“Because Mercedes had run long, we were able to push them to change early on in the first stint by getting Checo in as well. But of course, they then had the ability to go long in that middle stint that gave them an eight-lap tyre advantage to the end of the race.”
