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澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Nyck de Vries, the Mexican’s race pace and tyre preservation was ultimately superior to Verstappe𒁏n’s.
Heading into the Miami Grand Prix, Perezജ is just six points behind Verstappen and could lea൲d the championship with another victory this weekend.
Speaking after Sunday’s race✅ in Baku, Kravitz put forward an interesting theory to Horner’s post-race exchange with Red Bull’s star dri🐈ver.
“I thought the Perez radio message was interesting, when♉ he said: ‘Look, guys, we are still in the fight’.
“It sounded ༺like Perez was talking to his engineer and mechanics only, and n🎀ot 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 what sounded like reassuring radio messages to Max, saying: ‘Never mind, Checo got lucky with 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 onಞ, I’ll fight tooth and nail to be the man to fight for the championship’.”
Verstappen ultimately lost the lead because he stopped before the Safety Car w༒as deployed.
When the Dutchman came into the pit lane, de Vries had stopped out on track so a Safety Car or VSC was immiಌnent.
Kra🎉vitz described the decision to bring Verstappen in at that time as an “odd call”.
“I’m ꦜgoing to call it the odd call,” he said. “They could 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 hav🐲e had less than 10 seconds to tell Max to stay out.
“The decision time would have been six seconds, so🌠meth🌠ing like that. Then, they can’t guarantee that Verstappen wouldn’t be like ‘woah I’m already in the pitlane!’
“But, had that happened, Verstappen would have won this grand prix. Perez had the pace today. T𓂃hat’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 sဣharp eye for F1’s controversies and storyl🤡ines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased reporting.
