Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Vettel left Kvyat 'an enormous gap' - Horner

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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner expects Sebastian Vettel to change his opinion of the first corner incident with Daniil Kvyat after leaving "an enormous gap".

Kvyat took the inside line into Turn 1 at the start of the Chinese Grand Prix, with Vettel reacting to the appearance of the Red Bull and hitting team-mate Kimi Raikkonen. Vettel was very vocal on team radio and later strongly criticised Kvyat to his face ahead of the podium but Horner believes he will change his mind when he sees the incident again.

"I think when Seb has a good look at it he might change his opinion," Horner said. "There was an enormous gap up the inside there.

"Ferraris were getting dizzy with each other and Kyvat took advantage of it so I think it was a racing incident to be honest but I couldn’t see personally anything wrong with it."

And with Kvyat finishing third behind Vettel on track, Horner believes Red Bull could have beaten the Ferrari with Daniel Ricciardo if the Australian had not picked up a puncture early in the race.

"I think 2^nd[was possible]. I don’t think [Ricciardo] could challenge for the win but he was comfortably the second faster car. But Dani Kyvat picked up the baton and ran with it fantastically well from that point onwards and drove a very, very tidy race.

"The middle sector of the race when he and Sebastian were on the same tyre (the soft) there was nothing to choose between the two of them. Sebastian couldn’t get within DRS.

"Seb obviously had that last set of softs that he’d saved from Q3 but for the last stint versus our medium tyre – and even on them if you look at Ricciardo’s pace and Kyvat’s pace it was very respectable."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.