"It was a horrible race," claims Horner after Red Bull failed to score any points at its home race
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner branded the Austrian Grand Prix as a "horrible race" after the Milton Keynes-based outfit failed to score any points at the Red Bull Ring.
Although Max Verstappen wasn’t quite able to take the top spot across practice, he looked fairly competitive in the third and final practice on Satuday.
However, the Dutchman was unable to challenge for top places in qualifying, complaining about the overall balance of his RB21. In Q3, the reigning champion appeared to be in contention for P5 on the grid, but he was forced to abort his final flying lap due to yellow flags brought out for a spin by Pierre Gasly.
Although Verstappen had been expected to bounce back from his disappointing result in qualifying, the Dutchman's race ended after just three corners. The Dutchman's Red Bull was tagged by the Mercedes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli at Turn 3, with the incident forcing the reigning champion to retire from the action.
Reflecting on the Milton Keynes-based outfit's home race, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner stated: "It was a horrible race for us and desperately unlucky for Max to be taken out at Turn 3 when he had done nothing wrong, he had a good start and made good progress.
"It’s a shame, I don’t think we would have been racing the McLarens today but we would have been racing the Ferraris pretty hard. With Yuki it was again not a great race, he had damage to the front wing, a penalty and so on, unfortunately for us it was a weekend to forget."
Signing off with a word for the current pecking order, Horner reckoned that he can hardly understand how McLaren's MCL39 is able to protect the tyres in such hot conditions that features the Austrian Grand Prix.
“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.
“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.”
