Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner has claimed Mercedes altered its strategic plans at the British Grand Prix. A late Safety Car while Verstappen was leading prompted a pit stop for Red Bull, who fitted the Soft tyre for the sprint to the finish. The Hard tyre posed a dilemma when attempting to inject temperature for the restart, with Lando Norris having to defend his second place from Lewis Hamilton for three laps. While Verstappen was able to break the DRS window from Norris, he started to lose pace towards the end as the tyres overheated. George Russell had started on the softer compound and impressed with both pace and degradation said Horner when speaking to media, including RacingNews365.com : "We expected it to be a Medium-Hard race, but because of the performance of Russell on the Soft, it changed our strategy. "Particularly with the Safety Car with 16 laps to go, we felt that the Soft tyre would give Max the best opportunity to break that DRS effect."
Red Bull can't explain poor Verstappen start
Norris had a much better launch off his grid slot at the start which enabled him to take the lead from Verstappen into Turn 1. Piastri also briefly challenged the Dutchman for second but he managed to hold him at bay before the DRS was activated. "I would need to hear what Max has to say and what the engineers say, but historically here in second place, he's tended to get the better start," explained Horner. "Lando and particularly Piastri had a flyer, but it was then a question just making sure we stay cool and then Max was able to make the pass a few laps later."
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