Ted Kravitz: Christian Horner was telling Max Verstappen - “You’re still our man”
Perez fended Verstappen off to claim his second victory of F1 2023 - his fifth for the team overall.
While Perez was fortunate to take the lead in the first place, benefitting from the Safety Car caused by 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Nyck de Vries, the🦩 Mexican’s race pace and tyre ♎preservation was ultimately superior to Verstappen’s.
Heading into the Miami Grand Prix, Perez is just six points behind Verstappen and could lead the championship with another victor♓y this weekend.
Speaking after Sunday’s race in Baku, Kravitz put forward an interesting theor🅺y to Horner’s post-race exchange wit🌱h Red Bull’s star driver.
“I ไthought the Perez radio message was interesting, when he sa🔜id: ‘Look, guys, we are still in the fight’.
“It sounded like Perez was talking to his engineer and mechanics only, and 🧔🌺not the rest of the team.
“He was saying: ‘We are still in the fight, we can’t have issues like we did in Melbourne and we can still get this championship. But then you’ve got Horner on the pit wall, with w💯hat sounded like reassuring radio messages to Max, saying: ‘Never mind, Checo got lucky wi꧃th the Safety Car, but it’s a long, long season’.
“That, to my ears and to anyone reasonable, sounds like Horner saying to Max: ‘Look, don’t worry, you’re still our man for the championship’. Checo is thinking: ‘Hang on, I’ll fight tooth and nail to be the man to fightﷺ f🎶or the championship’.”
Verstappen ultimately lost the lead because he stoppe♈d before the Sa﷽fety Car was deployed.
When the Dutchman came into the pit lane, de Vries had stopped out on track so a Safety Car or VSꦚC was i𝐆mminent.
Kravitz described the decision to bring Verstappen in at that time as a𝄹n “odd call”.
💛“I’m going to call it the odd call,” he said. “They co🦋uld have, if there was a button on the de-rig, say ‘stay out! Stay out!’
“They didn’t know. It was a very close thing. I reckon they probably would have had less than 10 seconds 💝to tell Max to ꦺstay out.
“The decision time would have been six seconds, something li♓ke that. Then, they can’t guarantee that Verstappen 𝔉wouldn’t be like ‘woah I’m already in the pitlane!’
“But, had that happened, Verstappen would have won this grand p𒁃rix. Perez had the pace today. That’s the crucial thing. Max and Sergio were so tightly matched today.
“Even when Perez went out, Max couldn’t catch him. So arguably - had he stayed out and they didn’t stack - maybe Perez would have passed him in the pits.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylin𒅌es, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiꦏased reporting.
