Horner after second place for Max in Sochi: 'Feels like a victory'

Published on 26 September 2021 by Julien Lemmen

There was a big sigh of relief at Red Bull Racing after the Russian Grand Prix. On Friday, the mechanics installed a new Honda power unit on Max Verstappen's RB16B, resulting in a grid penalty. From last place on the grid, Max fought his way back to the front, aided by the rain and a perfectly timed change to intermediates, he ended up in second place behind title rival Lewis Hamilton, limiting the damage in the championship.

Team Principal Christian Horner reflects after the race: “Today’s result in recovering from 20th to 2nd is an amazing performance. Our congratulations must go to Lewis on his 100th victory, but second for us after taking our grid penalty feels like a victory. With six or seven laps to go it didn’t look like it was going to be possible. In tricky weather conditions like we had today, you can very easily come out looking like a hero or zero. It’s such a tough call knowing whether to pit or not and the drivers see and feel so much more out on track compared with the engineers on the pit wall, and so the decision was left to Max and Checo on stopping for inters or not. In the end Max got it right and nailed the call to come in, and benefitted massively as a result whilst Checo decided not to pit and ended up losing out significantly, but these things can happen and luck also has its part to play.”

Horner continues: “The last two venues have historically been very strong for Mercedes so to come away only two points behind in the Drivers’ Championship is positive, and I’m glad we’ve got our power unit penalty out of the way here and managed to recover with a podium. Everybody in the Team is really enjoying this championship, we’ve got ourselves back into a competitive position and it’s going to be all about these final seven races, getting the strategy right, having the pace, and penalties are going to play a role too. It’s going to be fascinating to see how it unfolds. Looking ahead to Turkey, it was an interesting race with the new surface last year. Hopefully it has weathered in now but we’re really looking forward to it and today’s result sets everything up in the championship up nicely. It’s going to be a phenomenal competition.”