Red Bull were undoubtedly happy with the result of the Italian Grand Prix this weekend, taking their twelfth race win of the season. Team boss Christian Horner, however, was rather disapproving of the FIA’s decision to finish the race behind the safety car rather than complete it with a race restart.
The safety car was brought out after Daniel Ricciardo was forced to stop on the track due to reliability issues during the end stages of the race. The Milton Keynes-based team was confident that Max Verstappen would have won the race even if the safety car had ended early on.
In a post-race media interaction, the Red Bull boss confessed that he would have preferred to see the race restart and not end under the F1 safety car. Emphasizing that there was “enough time” to do so, he said:
“We don’t want to win a race under a safety car. It’s something we’ve talked about for many many years, that they should finish racing. There was enough time to get that race going. I think they picked up the wrong cars, picked up George Russell. We had the faster car, we would have liked to win the race on the track, not behind the safety car. We share the disappointment of all the fans, because it took away a grandstand finish.” “It goes against the principles of what we’ve discussed previously. The biggest losers were the fans. We need to look quickly to address that. I think they had more than enough time to get going. We need to go through details, but for me there was enough time, we had a car that wasn’t in a barrier, it was just by the side of the track.”
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen himself admitted that it was “unfortunate” that the race was not restarted. Hey said:
“We had a great race. On every compound, we were the quickest. We had a really good race car. Just controlling the pace at the end. Of course, the safety car came out, and unfortunately, we didn’t get the restart but overall we had a really good race.”
As reported by Motorsport, an FIA spokesperson also commented on the incident, explaining the time taken to recover Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren from the racetrack. The spokesperson said:
“While every effort was made to recover Car #3 quickly and resume racing, the situation developed and marshals were unable to put the car into neutral and push it into the escape road. As the safety of the recovery operation is our only priority and the incident was not significant enough to require a red flag, the race ended under safety car following the procedures agreed between the FIA and all competitors. The timing of the safety car period within a race has no bearing on this procedure.”
Red Bull expect Max Verstappen to retire before breaking “all records”
Red Bull team advisor Helmut Marko admitted that while he would like to win more titles with Max Verstappen, he does not expect the Dutchman to stick around to break too many records.
As reported by PlanetF1, Marko said:
“We want to win more titles together. But I doubt if we will see Max drive until he has broken all records. He could make it, but he’s also the type of person who packs his things and leaves when he no longer feels like it. No matter how much you offer him, he won’t stay. And that could happen sooner than we all think.”
The Red Bull driver currently leads the championship and could mathematically win his second title in the next race in Singapore.
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