Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal and CEO Christian Horner says that the Brazilian Grand Prix was superb on all counts.
A superb race today on all counts. Max was fantastic. Got out in front early and managed the tyres well. It is a similarly stellar performance we have been seeing all season. Equally, Checo had a brilliant drive, back to the form we know so well. The form we have been willing him back to in the later stages of this season. He gave as good as he got against Alonso but unfortunately was just pipped at the post. Some great racing. It’s been a fantastic season for us and there are still two races to go. So our attention turns to Vegas in two weeks; racing down The Strip on Saturday night. It’s certainly going to be a week like no other.”
Champion Max Verstappen claimed his 17th win of the season breaking his own record of 16 from last year.
Speaking following the action he said:
It has been a good weekend in Brazil. It was a great race and we had good all-round pace throughout. Again, it was a really long stint on the tyres and it was important to save them throughout as we had high tyre degradation. Lando had a good race and I had to work to defend in the first lap and maintain the gap. He was close to me in stint one and pushed a bit harder on the newer compounds at the start but I stayed calm throughout the race, just relaxed and let the car roll into the corner. He did well and we had some good racing today. It has been quite a long triple header so looking forward to a few days break before preparing for Vegas. I am enjoying the moment and hopefully we can continue this success until the end of the year.”
Sergio Checo Perez started the race from ninth place and came home just 500th’s of a second behind third placed Fernando Alonso.
Let’s start from the beginning, it took me a while to get through the Mercedes and that damaged my race, after that we were always a bit on the back foot with Fernando. We were chipping away at him and towards the end we came really close to the podium. I have to say well done to Fernando because it was a great fight and really fair racing. Between us, whoever got the podium, it was well deserved, and he got it. I had the opportunity and went for it but he was really fast on the straights and I don’t think I could have done anything differently in the final few laps. I think that pace has been there for the last few weekends, but we haven’t been able to put it all together, it was a matter of time before it came. It was a good weekend for us in Championship, because we are getting closer to securing second spot, now we go to Vegas.”