Christian Horner believes Red Bull's strategy in the Hungarian Grand Prix showed Mercedes has "quite a lot of pace in hand".
Daniel Ricciardo was closing on Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in the second stint of the race, and made his final pit stop early in what appeared to be an attempt to undercut the Mercedes pair ahead. However, both Mercedes drivers immediately picked up their pace significantly and Horner says the move was primarily designed to defend against the threat from Sebastian Vettel behind.
“We were mainly protecting against Sebastian," Horner said. "Once we reached the point where we believed we were safe until the end of the race we could see that Sebastian was pushing on with things, trying to get within and undercut, so we decided to take the stop, make sure that we got track position and at the same time put Mercedes under a little bit of pressure.
"What it exposed was that as soon as they were under a little bit of pressure, they were able to turn things up quite a lot.
“I think at times we’ve seen Mercedes’ true performance. It’s similar to Monaco here but it’s not quite the same and the next big opportunity for us will be Singapore. They’ve got quite a lot of pace in hand so there is still quite some way that we have to go to close that down.”
After Ricciardo finished the race in third position, when asked if he was surprised Mercedes had so much extra pace available to it, Horner replied: “Not really.
"I mean they haven’t finished here really the last two years, or had clean races, so this is the first time in three years they’ve had a clean race here. They were obviously cruising very conservatively and we saw their true pace when they could match Daniel’s pace and go quicker on a worn tyre compared to him on a new tyre.”
REPORT: Hamilton holds off Rosberg to take championship lead
AS IT HAPPENED: Hungarian Grand Prix
Silbermann says ... Birds on the wire
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