McLaren<\/a> let the pair race rather than call for Piastri to move aside, which let Max Verstappen<\/a> maintain his lead at the front of the field and disappear out of sight once more.<\/p>\n Read Also:<\/p>\n Norris eventually dispatched his team-mate, but it was a close-run battle at Tamburello as Piastri defended the inside line into Turn 2; Horner praised both drivers for avoiding contact.<\/p>\n “Oscar had obviously pushed quite hard early on and you could see he was starting to get a little bit of graining on that front-right,” Horner said of McLaren’s race strategy.<\/p>\n “And so, it was borderline whether it was going to be a two-stop or one-stop. They obviously pulled the trigger on the two-stop, but it dropped you out because of the length of the pitlane here being 27 seconds.<\/p>\n “It put him into a world of pain traffic-wise. And so Max was then able to keep running and the deg was super low. And even with Lando in clean air behind, we were able to manage quite easily a nine-, nine-and-a-half-second gap.<\/p>\n “The VSC came out, and the pitstop was pretty straightforward. Oscar pitted again on his strategy, which sort of neutralised him, but by that time he’d used both of his hard tyres.<\/p>\n Safety car<\/p>\n Photo by: Lars Baron \/ Motorsport Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n “And then that final safety car, obviously Max pitted, Lando pitted, but it dropped him behind Oscar, which was, you know, you’ve got two drivers that are fighting for a world championship.<\/p>\n “At some point, self-interest will always outweigh team interest. That’s the conflict. So, they did a good job to not make contact. It was commendable that they were allowed to race, but you could see it got pretty close.”<\/p>\n Horner believed that, on the day, Red Bull had the much stronger pace over the Imola race following the team’s steady build-up through the weekend.<\/p>\n He was encouraged by the team’s performance, particularly Verstappen’s blend of competitive lap times and management on the tyres.<\/p>\n “I think today we had the pace to cover whatever they could throw at us,” Horner added.<\/p>\n “I think the first stint was really encouraging because we could see that [Verstappen] was managing more than the guys behind. So, he was driving very smartly and still pulling out a gap.<\/p>\n “And that’s always a happy place to be in. So, you get the longevity. And it’s the first time in quite a while that we’ve been in that position.”<\/p>\n Read Also:<\/p>\n In this article<\/p>\n Jake Boxall-Legge\n<\/p>\n Formula 1\n<\/p>\n Lando Norris\n<\/p>\n Oscar Piastri\n<\/p>\n Red Bull Racing\n<\/p>\n McLaren\n<\/p>\n Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull boss Christian Horner has hinted that McLaren’s position in both Formula 1 world championships, with two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[37710,4199,45111,707,4200,1711,1710,1712,749,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-113954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-emilia-romagna-gp","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-f1-emilia-romagna-gp","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-lando-norris","14":"tag-mclaren","15":"tag-oscar-piastri","16":"tag-red-bull-racing","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114533735012632599","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Safety](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/safety-car.jpg\")
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