Christian Horner believes that Max Verstappen could have done more in Singapore

• F1

The Red Bull team had a very disappointing weekend in Singapore. Few expected it to be as disappointing as it was. Ultimately, Max Verstappen ended up finishing in 4th place. Christian Horner believes that Max had the potential to do much more than he did.

In Horner's opinion, if it was a standard race, Verstappen would have been able to use his pace to do much better than the result he achieved. “I think the pre-race simulations was saying about P7,” Horner said, as quoted by crash.net!

“But that's in a standard race. I think, ironically enough, if we'd have had a standard race, the strategy that we had with Carlos holding the front up because of the deg on those Hard tyres, Max would have definitely come into play with the pace that he had at the end of the race.

So when you look at the distance, the delta he was off to the leaders, by the end of it, if you take away the delta for the free stops, suddenly bang - he’s right in the game”.

Christian Horner's reaction

The fact that Red Bull was far from reaching its goal was evident from the very beginning of qualification.

Horner did not have high expectations for this very reason. Moreover, it appears that the leaders of Red Bull and the rest of the team were surprised by the fact that the weekend turned out to be so disastrous for them. Even though Verstappen had a pace in the end, many other things did not appear to be going well for him.

“I think we understood a lot more in the race and the pace of the car came much more back to what we expected,” Horner added. “Coming here we expected to have closer competition. But I think it took us a bit by surprise just how far out we were on Friday.

And I think that we were just not in the right operating window for the car, particularly over a single lap, and when you’re not there then the tyres feel horrible, everything just doesn’t work. So I think we got a very good steer in the race, I think that we saw, particularly in the latter stint, that Max’s pace was very, very strong”.