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 prese🐷rvation 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 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 driver.
“I thought th🦋e Perez radio message was interesting, when he said: ‘Look, 🌺guys, we are still in the fight’.
“I😼t sounded like Perez was talking to his engineer and mechanics only, and not the rest of♛ the team.
“He w𝔉as 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 m🌟an for the championship’. Checo is thinking: ‘Hang on, I’ll fight tooth and nail to be the man to fight for the championship’.”
Verstappenꦓ ultimately lost the lead because he stopped before the Safety Car was deployed.
When the Dutchman came into the pit lane, de Vries had stopped out on track so a Safety Car or VSC was imminen𒁃t.
Kravitz described the decision to bring Verstappen in🌼 at thꦚat time as an “odd call”.
“I’m going to call it the odd call,” he said. “They cಞould have, if there was a button on the de-rig, say ‘stay ou🌠t! Stay out!’
“They didn’t know. It was a very close thing. I rec﷽kon they probably would have had less than 10 seconds to🐬 tell Max to stay out.
“The decision time would have been six seconds, something like that. Then,🍃 they can’t guarantee that Ve🤡rstappen 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. 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 storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased reportin🍒g.
