Christian Horner defends a two-stop strategy for Sebastian Vettel: Formula 1 News
Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner has claimed that the two-stop strategy for championship leader, Sebastian Vettel, was absolutely the right move. The young German started the race from pole position, but was unable to win the race, finishing runner-up
to McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.
After the end of the race, Vettel claimed that he could have won the race if he was on a three-stop strategy. He stated that the tyres had degraded a lot towards the end of the race and fresher rubber would have made things easier for him, to score a hat-trick
of winning races in the Formula 1 2011 season.
However, Horner claimed, “If we had made just three stops behind them, we probably would have stayed behind both of them. So we decided to do something different to try and beat both of them and we thought we could make it work - we came within four to five
laps of doing so – and P2 is still a great result.”
He further added, “Lewis with the shape that his tyres were in was so much quicker that it wasn't worth fighting so hard. Points are still important and it's a long championship. He made him work for it for a couple of laps, but it was inevitable with the
difference in grip.”
According to Red Bull’s team principal, Vettel was behind both the McLaren drivers, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, when the team decided for a two-stop strategy. He claimed that if the German had stopped one more time after that, he would have still finished
in the same spot.
Horner also praised the efforts of Mark Webber today, as the Australian drove the limits out of his car. He didn’t have an ideal start to the race, as he was stuck behind traffic. However, things changed once the veteran turned to the softer tyres.
Although Red Bull was pleased with the outcome of the race today, Horner was concerned over the performance of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS). The power boost system worked fine in the initial half of the race, but caused problems to the drivers
towards the end.
Tags: