{"id":57858,"date":"2025-04-24T17:06:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T15:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/57858\/horner-encourages-red-bull-in-jeddah-we-were-faster-than-mclaren\/"},"modified":"2025-04-24T17:15:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T15:15:56","slug":"horner-encourages-red-bull-in-jeddah-we-were-faster-than-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/57858\/horner-encourages-red-bull-in-jeddah-we-were-faster-than-mclaren\/","title":{"rendered":"Horner encourages Red Bull: “In Jeddah, we were faster than McLaren”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Despite missing out on the win, Christian Horner said he was encouraged by the performance at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where \u2013 according to him \u2013 Red Bull was faster than McLaren.<\/h2>\n\n

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner<\/strong> was full of praise for his team\u2019s efforts at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix<\/a>, highlighting the impressive turnaround from a challenging Friday to securing pole position and fighting for the win on Sunday. Max Verstappen <\/a>put together a stunning lap on Saturday to put his RB21 at the front of the grid, but it was the mechanics who worked something close to a miracle to turn the weekend around after a tough start\u2014despite decent results on paper (third and sixth in FP2).<\/p>\n\n

\"Horner
Horner encourages Red Bull: “In Jeddah, we were faster than McLaren”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

After the first day in Jeddah, Red Bull\u2019s main issue was the long-run pace\u2014an area where Verstappen ended up outperforming everyone else on Sunday. The victory slipped through his fingers only because of a 5-second penalty for cutting Turn 1 on the opening lap, but he still finished just 2.8 seconds behind Oscar Piastri, having closed the gap in the final stages of the race. <\/p>\n\n

After a terribly lackluster weekend in Bahrain, Red Bull has reason to smile: they\u2019re truly back in the fight at the front<\/strong>. \u201cLet\u2019s focus on the positives,\u201d <\/em>Horner told the official F1 website. <\/a>\u201cWe finished second and had the right pace, whereas after Friday we thought McLaren would be a second quicker than the rest of the field.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\"Horner
Horner encourages Red Bull: “In Jeddah, we were faster than McLaren”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

\u201cWe were strong on both the mediums and the hards\u2014I\u2019m sure the data will show we were quicker than McLaren<\/strong>,\u201d<\/em> Horner said. In fact, the race pace confirms it: Verstappen\u2014Red Bull\u2019s only car in the race after Tsunoda retired just a few corners in\u2014was the fastest driver on average, ahead of Piastri, Norris, and Leclerc. <\/p>\n\n

Dirty air, as always, played a key role. Verstappen lost time behind Piastri in the second stint, just as Piastri had been held up behind Verstappen in the first. Nevertheless, the fact that the reigning world champion was able to close the gap to the McLaren driver suggests that the two cars were at the very least evenly matched in Jeddah. <\/p>\n\n

\"Horner
Horner encourages Red Bull: “In Jeddah, we were faster than McLaren”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

\u201cOur engineers did a fantastic job, giving Max a car that was the most competitive we’ve had this year in both qualifying and the race<\/strong>,\u201d<\/em> Horner continued. \u201cIn terms of pure pace, we were able to pull away from the McLaren at the start. We\u2019re closing in on them, and we\u2019re just 2 points behind Lando and 12 behind Oscar\u2014that\u2019s encouraging for us,\u201d he added. <\/em>.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cObviously, we\u2019re all very disappointed with the race result. We felt we had what it takes to beat McLaren, but we\u2019ll take what we got, focus on the positives, and already look ahead to Miami,\u201d<\/em> Horner said. A track where, with the high temperatures, McLaren is expected to perform well\u2014but then again, it was hot in Jeddah too\u2026 <\/p>\n\n

Photo: Oracle Red Bull Racing on X<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite missing out on the win, Christian Horner said he was encouraged by the performance at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where \u2013 according to him \u2013 Red Bull was faster than McLaren. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was full of praise for his team\u2019s efforts at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, highlighting the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":57855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[389],"tags":[2311,2434,3435,2248,1270],"piloti":[],"class_list":["post-57858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1-en","tag-christian-horner-en","tag-f1-2025-en","tag-gp-saudi-arabia-2025","tag-max-verstappen-en","tag-red-bull-en"],"acf":{"live":false},"fimg_url":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Go_tJL3XMAApg-r-1.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57858"},{"taxonomy":"piloti","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpkingdom.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/piloti?post=57858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}