'We couldn't have done more at Singapore', says Horner

40

Team boss Christian Horner says that Red Bull could have done nothing more in Singapore to snatch victory from Mercedes, despite the close finish to last weekend's Grand Prix.

Horner praised the efforts of Daniel Ricciardo, who was able to eat into Nico Rosberg's lead at Marina Bay over the final 15 laps after a late switch to supersoft tyres which saw him come within half a second of taking the the lead before ultimately he ran out of time to pull it off.

"Nico had a very strong weekend, and he had a bit too much for us in qualifying, and in the race," admitted Horner. "We tried everything we could. We tried a different strategy at the end of the race, which forced them to stick to the two stop.

"Whilst Daniel did a fantastic job to close Nico down over the last laps, they just left enough in hand to keep a margin to the chequered flag.

"To get within half a second after two hours was a great performance, but it was not quite enough."

Horner added that being held up by lapped traffic - specifically Haas F1's Esteban Gutierrez - hadn't made any significant difference to the way that the race had turned out.

"Not really. We picked up DRS from Gutierrez so what we lost we gained. It cost Rosberg probably a little bit more than us, so it evened out.

"That was as close, unfortunately, that we could get," he conceded. "But it made an exciting finish to the race, and it was great to put him under a bit of pressure."

Horner was full of praise for Ricciardo's driving throughout the whole weekend at Singapore.

"I think ever since he drove the HRT car round here you can see he’s always enjoyed this circuit. He’s found a rhythm around here and a confidence, and street circuits are an awful lot about confidence.

"He’s performed at an immensely high level this weekend, no mistakes, and he’s driven an excellent grand prix at one of the toughest races of the year, two hours in duration to finish within half a second. It’s pretty impressive."

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Nicolas Carpentiers checks out the latest engineering novelties and concepts seen in Singapore

Scene at the 2016 Singapore Grand Prix

Quotes of the week - 2016 Singapore Grand Prix

2016 Singapore Grand Prix - Driver ratings

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.