Horner Rues Bad Luck for Red Bull in Miami

Red Bull’s Christian Horner reflects on the team’s challenges and praises McLaren’s triumph in Miami.

Red Bull faced its second defeat of the season in Miami, falling to McLaren F1. Team principal Christian Horner commended the winners and expressed regret that circumstances did not favor Max Verstappen in the battle for victory.

“First of all, congratulations to McLaren and Lando. They drove a fantastic race and it’s a well-deserved victory,” stated Horner.

“Max was a bit unlucky to sustain damage to the floor when he hit a cone around the 21st lap, but it was tough for him in terms of pace compared to usual.”

“After the race, we saw that he had quite a bit of damage under the floor because he went over the base holding the cone to the ground. We need to assess how much this slowed him down in our analyses but maybe 2 to 3 tenths per lap.”

“But he had enough pace at that time, he was pulling away from Oscar [Piastri] and Lando before sustaining this damage, and then, of course, we pitted.”

“And yes, the safety car came out at the best time for Lando, giving him essentially a free pit stop. But, obviously, it’s not great for us because then you are on tyres six or seven laps older. And with the damage, I think second place was still a pretty decent result.”

The Briton explained that Sergio Pérez also struggled with his tyres and lamented the ill-timed race neutralization: “Checo was also having trouble with his tyres, he came back a bit towards the end but it was hard to find the pace for him as well.”

“We were also a bit unlucky with the safety car but that’s racing, we are still the team leading the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship, so we can take pride in that as we head back to Europe. It was still overall a good weekend.”