“We rolled the dice a little bit today,” Horner explained after the race. “Starting on the hard [tyre] our tactic was always to go long, with the main opportunity being Safety Cars or red flags, which can sometimes be the case here.
“Max led large portions of the race, but it was one of those Monacos where everybody pretty much behaved. So, yeah, the first stop, we got pretty close to Oscar at one point. He had a wobble on his second lap out after his pit stop but we would have been at best alongside, so we decided, look, we’ll keep going, let’s keep going.
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“The upside was, if there’d have been a Safety Car or red flag, Max would have led. Then, again, we had the medium tyre [for the second stint], went very, very long, obviously stopped on the last lap, and again, you’re just hanging out for a Safety Car or VSC [Virtual Safety Car] or red flag at that point.”
Reflecting on the strategy of Verstappen’s team mate Yuki Tsunoda – who started from P12 on the grid and ended the race down in P17 – Horner added: “For Yuki, we did the inverse – Lap 1 initially looked like he would get a significant benefit from it, but then everybody started to drive extremely slowly as they started to play around with the tactics.
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