Christian Horner admits that Red Bull conceded last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix to McLaren early on in the race’s opening stint, when Lando Norris upped the pace and revealed his car’s true performance level.
Norris had been comfortably ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the opening laps when he informed his McLaren engineers that he was on “pace six”.
The team then asked him to push harder and increase the gap to Verstappen by five seconds by the mid-teens laps. Within three laps, Norris had achieved that margin, pulling out around one second per lap on the reigning world champion.
It was a pivotal moment for Red Bull that reflected the sheer magnitude of McLaren’s speed, as Horner recounted.
"Yeah, that was taking a piss... although I shouldn't say that in any official capacity," Horner said, making light of the FIA’s fresh stance on swearing.
“The pace he had in hand on that tyre at that point in time was…at that point, we've conceded the race on pace.”
Despite the setback, Horner noted that Norris wasn’t completely flawless, but even those moments didn’t change the outcome.
“Obviously, he touched the wall for the first time, then he touched it for the second time. But, obviously, they've got away with it.
“I actually think Max drove a very strong race. That was what we had, which when you consider where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we have made some real progress. But obviously, we've got a lot of work to do before Austin.”
Red Bull found some solace in the race’s latter stages, when the teams switched to the hard tyres. On the more durable compound, the gap between Norris and Verstappen stabilized.
“On the first stint they were very quick,” Horner added. “I think on the hard tyre we looked in better shape, but of course, the gap is way too big by then, at a track that anyway is very hard to overtake.”
Despite the improvement on the hard tyres, as perceived by Horner, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella later revealed that the times on the white-walled compound may not have been truly representative.
McLaren had instructed Norris to back off and focus on bringing the car home safely rather than pushing flat-out.
"In fairness, in the second part of the second stint, our attention was drawn on the fact that as soon as you got behind the backmarkers, the car started to feel tricky," Stella explained.
"The focus was entirely on bringing the car home."
McLaren eventually suggested Norris make a brief attempt at the fastest lap, which he achieved before shifting the focus back to a cautious run to the finish.
"We suggested to Lando to have an attempt at the fastest lap, which he achieved. But after that, we didn't want to talk about fastest lap anymore," Stella concluded.
While McLaren’s dominant display was a bitter pill for Red Bull to swallow, Horner’s comments reveal a team looking ahead, focused on finding improvements before the next race in Austin.
However, the Singapore Grand Prix will be remembered as a day when Red Bull had no answer to McLaren’s raw speed.
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