RBR chief says early stop would have put Vettel behind Grosjean anyway
Last Updated: June 10, 2012 11:26pm
Sebastian Vettel: Slid from third to fourth
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Red Bull chief Christian Horner has insisted that the team's "only real option" was to try and one-stop Sebastian Vettel in a bid to hang on to a podium finish in the closing stages of the Canadian Grand Prix, but that ultimately the RB8's tyre degradation proved too great to make it work.
The World Champions and rivals Ferrari chose not to follow rivals McLaren in pitting their respective lead car for a second time entering the final 20 laps of Sunday's race. Instead, both teams tried to make their soft tyres last for the remainder of the 70 laps and stay ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Having already run more than 30 laps on the soft tyre at this stage, it seemed a risky move and ultimately backfired as Hamilton easily caught and passed both cars on track, which prompted Vettel to eventually make a stop, while Ferrari kept their car out to the end of the race with costly consequences.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1's Ted Kravitz after seeing Vettel ultimately come home in fourth place, Horner said the team had been limited in their options as had Vettel stopped at the same time as Hamilton he would have come out behind the Lotus of Romain Grosjean anyway.
Asked what the pit wall's choices had been, he replied: "Your options at that point, you tyres are feeling okay, try to go to the [end of the] race, take the track position because we would have come out behind Grosjean who was going pretty quickly at that stage, so the probability of overtaking him would have been limited.
"So our only real option to stay on the podium and beat, for example, Lewis was to stay out there. But then the tyres really started to get into trouble so we made a late call to pit and Sebastian managed to get back past Fernando.
"We were probably just a little bit too hard on the tyres today to make that one-stop really work."
Red Bull too tough on tyres
But asked by Ted what might have happened if the team had either pitted Vettel the lap before Hamilton, or not pitted for the second time at all, Horner replied: "If we'd have pitted before Hamilton the net result would have been the same because we'd have come out behind Grosjean. We might have beaten Perez.
"If we'd have stayed out for sure we would have finished much further down."
Armed with the benefit of hindsight, Horner suggested it might have actually been wiser for the team - who on Saturday had seen Vettel take a brilliant pole - to have sacrificed grid positions in order to start on the more durable 'prime' tyre, the compound Sergio Perez had started on to ultimately devastating effect as the Mexican surged to third at the flag.
"A complicated race," the Red Bull boss acknowledged. "Maybe, with twenty-twenty vision, starting on the hard tyre a bit further back might have been a better option in that Perez from 13th on the first lap really made that work today.
"But perhaps we were just a little bit too hard on the tyres. Nonetheless, very good points for us. It's still massively close at the front. In the constructors' we're still going okay...congratulations for Lewis."
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