“It’s a shame for Checo because he should have been on the podium today,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner after the 2023 Formula 1 season finale in Abu Dhabi. The Mexican crossed the finish line in second place, but only finished fourth due to a five-second penalty.
Red Bull even had some help: Charles Leclerc deliberately let Perez pass on the last lap because he hoped that he would finish ahead of George Russell. “In Ferrari’s situation it was logical, but they only did half the job,” says Horner.
At the finish, Perez was only 3.9 seconds ahead of Russell, meaning he fell behind him in the result. “I think like Checo in this sector of the track [2021] has shown, you can do it there [ein anderes Auto] for some time,” reminds Horner.
“I think Charles should have held George up just a little bit more to get that extra second,” insists Horner. But Leclerc let Perez pass on the last lap, but did not consciously stop Russell afterwards, as Perez did with Lewis Hamilton in 2021, for example.
“That means we’ll have a different neighbor next year [in der Boxengasse] will have,” said Horner. Because Perez slipped behind Russell in the final result, Mercedes won the duel for P2 in the constructors’ championship against Ferrari.
Formula 1: Would Verstappen have won with a stop?
While Perez narrowly missed the podium, Max Verstappen had everything under control at the front. At the finish he was almost 18 seconds ahead of the rest of the world. So would the Dutchman have won the race with one stop or two?
Horner reveals in this context: “We actually only planned one stop at the beginning of the race and then switched to two because we saw that the degradation on the medium tire was a little more than we would have liked.”
“I think we could have done it with one stop with Max because he had the pace and the ability to manage the tires. But with Checo it looked like he was running out of tires towards the end of the race,” reveals Horns.
“That’s why we set both cars to two stops,” he explains. Verstappen had to fight a lot harder in qualifying. Helmut Marko even bet 500 euros that the world champion wouldn’t be on pole this time.
Horner: Problems on Saturday were just a minor thing
Horner was much more confident and revealed: “In our analysis on Friday, we were in decent shape.” On Saturday, in the third training session, they simply “tried out something with the set-up”, but it didn’t go in the right direction.
“Then we reverted those changes and [das Auto] a little more tuned in the direction that brought the car back into a somewhat more normal operating window,” reveals the team boss.
“It was just a matter of clarifying these basics and the engineering team did a great job,” he praises, explaining that Verstappen then did the rest on the track. The Dutchman took his twelfth pole position there this year.
And although Perez missed the podium on Sunday, Red Bull set a new record at the end of the year. The Bulls scored a total of 860 World Championship points last season – more than any team has ever achieved in a Formula 1 season.