Horner points to the culprit: “Verstappen should never have been near Hamilton”

The Monza race is an accumulation of all kinds of things that went wrong for Christian Horner. The Red Bull Racing team boss admits that Max Verstappen should never have come near Lewis Hamilton in the first place.

With a lead of five points, Verstappen still has a good starting position for the world championship with Red Bull. However: that could have been a lot more points, because quite a bit went wrong during the Italian Grand Prix. Where he initially had luck on his side, by being allowed to start the race on pole, it turned out very differently in the Grand Prix. Mistakes were made by Verstappen’s team and himself.

It went wrong on the front right

That mainly started with the completely failed pit stop, which lasted more than eleven seconds. Horner also acknowledges that. “That was a human error,” he says. “Something went wrong in the front right. The wheel seemed to be in place and ready to go, but the car did not let go.” Nevertheless, Horner continues to praise his staff. “I have to say that our men normally do a phenomenal job in the pit lane. This Sunday it just didn’t go our way.”

Hamilton pit stop messed up

Because the pit stop lasted much longer, Verstappen fell back considerably in the race. He ended up behind Lando Norris, who had been battling Hamilton for a long time. When the seven-time world champion made a pit stop, something went wrong and it took a little longer. “This has put us in the familiar situation. Normally we should not have been near Lewis at all. Mercedes also messed up Lewis’s stop, of course. [Verstappen, red.] clearly got it. Anyway, because of this confluence of circumstances, they ended up exactly together in the fairway.”