Christian Horner was delighted to see Max Verstappen prevail in Sunday's Italian Grand Prix, but the Red Bull boss lamented the race's conclusion under the safety car, insisting there was enough time "to get that race going".
As Verstappen was leading the race from Charles Leclerc, an engine failure left Daniel Ricciardo's McLaren stranded on the side of the track between the two Lesmo corners with eight laps to go, a break-down that brought out the safety car to allow the safe evacuation of the Aussie's car.
However, a slow evacuation process coupled with a mistake by the SC that picked up the wrong leading car - the Mercedes of George Russell instead of Verstappen's Red Bull - led to the laps unfolding and no time left to relaunch the race.
©RedBull
"We don't want to win a race under a safety car," Horner told Sky F1. "And that's something that we've talked about for many, many years that they should finish racing.
"There was enough time to get that race going. I think they picked up the wrong car, they picked up George Russell.
"We had the faster car, and we would have liked to have won the race on the track, not behind the safety car. So we share the disappointment of all the fans because it took away a grandstand finish.
"If there hadn’t been a safety car, we had enough pace in hand on the one-stop that we’d adopted. We’d saved a new set of tyres, we had a new set versus Charles’ scrubbed set, it was all set for a grandstand finish that we didn’t get to see.
"And I think it goes against the principles of what we’ve discussed previously. I think the biggest losers today unfortunately were the fans, but we need to look quickly to address that."
In the Ferrari camp, team boss Mattia Binotto was on the same page as his Red bull counterpart regarding how the end of the race had been managed, and wasted.
"We tried to do what we could," Binotto told Sky F1. "Max [Verstappen] had a fantastic race, he was fantastic today again.
"I was a bit disappointed for the ending. Finishing behind a safety car is never great for F1, the show.
"There was plenty of time for the FIA to act differently today. It was fully safe to run on the track towards the end. To wait so much is simply wrong.
"We need to have discussions on how to improve because the aim should be to restart the race as soon as possible. The FIA need more experience but they need to do a better job because F1 deserves it."
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