Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says the set-up changes the team made to Sergio Perez’s car for the sprint race helped his team mate take pole position in Qatar.
Max Verstappen qualified sixth for the sprint race but beat George Russell to pole position for the grand prix by five hundredths of a second.“It was a great turnaround by the team,” Horner told the official F1 channel. “A lot of hard work between the sessions and looking at the data, a lot of changes. So a great team effort. Max has gone and extracted every ounce of performance out of it.”
Perez started the sprint race from the pit lane after Red Bull chose to sacrifice his lowly 16th place on the grid to make set-up changes to his car. They changed his front wing during the race to help gather data to guide the team’s set-up choices for qualifying.
“We made a few changes to Checo’s car, taking him out of parc ferme,” Horner explained. “That’s definitely played a part in what we’ve done here for qualifying.
“Obviously looking at the data, there were three corners that we were really bad at yesterday: Turn one, turn two and the last corner. We managed to address that today.”
Horner said the improvements the team made to their car exceeded their predictions. “I don’t think any of us expected this kind of turnaround. So, a hell of a turnaround by all the team.
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Red Bull have only won a single grand prix over the last 12 rounds. Horner hopes the cooler conditions will help to give them a chance at victory on Sunday.
“We’re certainly hoping that the changes we made today apply for tomorrow as well. It’s very cold here. Getting these tyres to work is crucial. They lasted well in the race earlier, the degradation was very low and I expect to see that again tomorrow.”
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2024 Qatar Grand Prix
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Edvaldo
30th November 2024, 22:34
And people wonder why they keep re-signing him. That man serves a purpose in there.
SPArtacus
30th November 2024, 23:18
You mean after qualifying in nearly last place for the race, then forgetting to go on green and not even having the pace to catch Colapinto, they dared to lose a chance for P19 in the sprint in order to test a new front wing with 5 laps to go? That was as much for Checo’s benefit as Max’s and Perez did reap a major benefit as we could see from the fact he actually got into Q3 instead of yet another Q1 exit.
Invisiblekid (@invisiblekid)
1st December 2024, 1:00
What??! You mean they should keep Perez because they can use him to set-ups. What a sneaky thing to do. Shhhhhh I hope the other teams don’t think of that idea. Perhaps their 2nd drivers could do the same, actually score points and not look like it’s their first F1 race weekend, after weekend after weekend.