Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has revealed that he was “shouting” at Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase at the Dutch Grand Prix, following a late heavy downpour.
Last weekend’s race at Zandvoort was a chaotic one, which saw the conditions change from dry to wet twice.
In the closing stages, the conditions were dry, with everyone having been on a slick compound.
Verstappen led from Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso, when a deluge of rain fell.
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It was monsoon-like conditions in a flash, to the point that streams were forming across the circuit.
Despite this, the reigning World Champion wasn’t sure if pitting was the right thing to do.
Lambiase calmly told him on Lap 62 that “now would be a good time to pit”, but it turns out that Horner was shouting at the race engineer to get Verstappen into the pits for a set of Intermediates.
“We were a bit unsure of what was going to happen with the weather,” Horner told media including RacingNews365.
“[We were wondering whether] it was a few spots [of rain], was it going to blow through?
“In the end, I was shouting at GP: ‘Get him in!'”
Pitting in the closing stages wasn’t Red Bull’s only challenging decision, as they also had to decide which driver to pit first following a spell of rain in the opening stages of the race.
Almost everyone switched from a dry compound to the Intermediates in the opening few laps, following a sudden downpour.
Perez was the first to pit and actually inherited the race lead, after successfully undercutting Verstappen.
However, when the track dried, Red Bull decided to pit Verstappen first, despite the fact Perez was leading.
As a result, Verstappen regained the race lead, whilst Perez dropped to second.
Horner explained the reasoning behind the decision after the race, where he revealed that if Perez pitted before Verstappen, then the Dutchman would’ve dropped to fourth.
“At one point, [Verstappen] took seven seconds out of [Perez] in three laps, and was coming very, very fast,” Horner explained.
“Then you get to that awkward point of the crossover, and [Fernando] Alonso and [Zhou Guanyu] were behind him and had pulled the trigger and pitted.
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“You could see from [Alexander] Albon suddenly the circuit was coming alive for slicks, so had we pitted Checo first, they would have both undercut Max.
“So we would have gone from a net one-two to a net one-four.
“We pitted Max first, with the risk being that he’d undercut Checo, but we’d end up with first and second as a team, so it was a no-brainer.”