“It didn’t make any sense to let them fight,” Christian Horner explains Red Bull’s debatable team orders to Sergio Perez
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Christian Horner and Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez drove a brilliant race at the Spanish GP to finish P2 behind his Red Bull team mate, Max Verstappen. The Mexican might have started the race from the third row of the grid but didn’t waste any time to get his elbows out and get past Carlos Sainz going into the first corner. We thought that just like Carlos Sainz he would get past George Russell too, but that was not to happened as Russell defended for his life.
After Charles Leclerc’s shocking retirement, it was pretty clear as to who three will finish in the podium places. Only the order was up for debate. After Sergio Perez got past George Russell and a different strategy helped Max Verstappen to get ahead of the Mercedes driver, a Red Bull 1-2 was just a mere formality. But the win was up for grabs and we expected the two Red Bulls to fight it out.
But, disappointingly, that wasn’t the case as Red Bull ordered Sergio Perez to let Max Verstappen through. This came as a surprise for everyone as this was only the 6th race of a long season. The Mexican would have wanted to fight it out with the reigning world champion irrespective of the result. We can understand that Max was on a fresher set of tyres but that doesn’t mean you don’t allow the two front men to battle it out.
Also Read: Nicholas Latifi admits a lack of “Confidence and trust” in his Williams challenger
Christian Horner has come out to explain himself after controversial team orders to Sergio Perez
Christian Horner and Red Bull have faced severe criticism following the decision and has had to come out and explain himself. Post race, he said, “I spoke with him when he got out the car. The problem for any driver, if they don’t have the clear overview of the strategy or a race put in front of them, it’s always going to be emotive to give up a lead.”
“But he played very much the team game, I think he understood clearly it wasn’t like a like-for-like fight, because the pace delta between the strategies was so great that from a team point of view, for me, it just didn’t make any sense.”
“Which was why we didn’t let the drivers get into a fight today,” as reported by motorsport.
Sergio Perez has all the right to feel hard done by. The Mexican has been brilliant throughout this year and should be given every opportunity to fight for that coveted world title.
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Shubham Bajpai
(776 Articles Published)