Horner explains ‘totally unusual’ Verstappen pit stop

Christian Horner has labelled the unscheduled pit stop made by Max Verstappen at last weekend’s United States Grand Prix as “totally unusual”.

Red Bull mechanics were caught out during the race at COTA when the Dutchman came in the pit lane prematurely, having wrongly interpreted a message to push as an order to box.

“It was something totally unusual, so [Max] just arrived in the pit lane and said I am in the pit lane,” Horner said.

“So we are not very good at fitting tires when we don’t know he is coming in.

“He had not heard anything that lap. The previous lap he’d been told to push to basically close the gap back up to [Rosberg] because we were going to try and have an undercut on Nico.”

Verstappen was quick to take the blame for the fumble, saying it “it was definitely my fault and not very clever.”

The mishap ultimately came to nothing since the 19-year-old withdrew from the race with a gearbox issue shortly after his botched pit stop.

Despite the retirement, Red Bull still managed to gain three points on Ferrari in the Constructors’ championship after outperforming the Scuderia in Austin.

“[COTA] is slightly less power sensitive than Suzuka,” Horner added to explain his team's performance edge over the Scuderia. “We had the upper hand on Ferrari all weekend.

“And we were fortunate that through Kimi [Raikkonen]’s DNF it neutralised our DNF. Still three races to go and all those points available.”

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