{"id":65247,"date":"2025-05-01T08:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T08:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/65247\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T08:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T08:56:08","slug":"red-bull-made-tactical-decision-not-to-avoid-a-penalty-in-jeddah-horner-confirms-%c2%b7-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/65247\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull made tactical decision not to avoid a penalty in Jeddah, Horner confirms \u00b7 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has admitted the team made a tactical decision not to give up the lead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix despite Max Verstappen<\/a> facing the threat of a penalty.<\/p>\n

Verstappen narrowly lost his lead from pole position to Oscar Piastri<\/a> on the run to the first corner. The Red Bull driver then cut across the run-off area at the first corner to retake the lead.<\/p>\n

The stewards immediately placed the incident under investigation. Horner acknowledged they could have avoided a penalty for Verstappen by relinquishing the lead to Piastri but chose not to as they wanted to avoid running in dirty air and damaging their tyres.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had given the position back\u2026 we chose not to at the time, because it would have put us under pressure from the cars behind, plus the benefit of clean air is never to be underestimated,\u201d Horner told the BBC<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Verstappen pulled out a lead of 2.6 seconds over Piastri as the McLaren driver began to struggle with his tyres towards the end of the first stint. Although Piastri lost time at his subsequent pit stop, and Verstappen was instructed to use his engine\u2019s maximum power mode on his in-lap<\/a>, the McLaren driver regained the lead of the race when the Red Bull driver pitted.<\/p>\n

Piastri went on to win the race. Horner said allowing the McLaren driver into the lead to avoid a penalty would not have given Verstappen a better chance to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I think overtaking at that circuit, as you saw, is so hard,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when you run in the dirty air, to get close, particularly in that awesomely quick first sector. There would have been no chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Horner gave a different account to the stewards for why they chose to reduce Verstappen\u2019s penalty from the usual 10 seconds to five. He said this was because the decision was \u201ca very marginal call.\u201d<\/p>\n

However in their decision the stewards stated \u201cit was [Piastri\u2019s] corner and he was entitled to be given room,\u201d that Verstappen \u201cleft the track and gained a lasting advantage that was not given back\u201d and \u201cstayed in front of [Piastri] and sought to build on the advantage.\u201d They only gave one mitigating factor for reducing the severity of Verstappen\u2019s penalty, which was that \u201cthis was [a] lap one and turn one incident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verstappen\u2019s performance in Jeddah is an encouraging sign for Red Bull, said Horner. \u201cOn that first stint we were able to pull away,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the second stint we were 4.8 seconds behind when we left the pit lane and we finished the race 2.6 seconds behind Oscar.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we had the pace in that race to win it outright, which has really been the first time, I think, this year that we\u2019ve had the upper hand in pace on race day to the McLarens.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has admitted the team made a tactical decision not to give up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[20600,24994,4199,707,4200,1073,226,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-65247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-2025-saudi-arabian-grand-prix","9":"tag-christian-horner","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-max-verstappen","14":"tag-red-bull","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114431746642311145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65247","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=65247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}