Horner says equal driver status compromised McLaren's F1 Japanese GP

Red Bull Formula 1 team boss Christian Horner thinks Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri having equal status made it harder for McLaren to fight Max Verstappen in Suzuka.

Having been outqualified by Verstappen's stunning pole lap on Saturday, Norris and Piastri spent the grand prix chasing the reigning champion in an intrinsically quicker McLaren, with Suzuka's one-stop race void of overtaking opportunities.

In the second stint Piastri asked the team to swap positions and hand him a chance to fight Verstappen, the Australian feeling he had extra pace in hand.

But that call never came, with team boss Andrea Stella not convinced Piastri was actually faster than Norris in the Red Bull's dirty air.

"I don't think it is so clear that Oscar was faster," Stella said. "Lando was trying to get Max's slipstream even closer, but anytime you went below a second there was a significant loss of grip.

"At this track you need seven, eight tenths of performance advantage in order to be able to overtake."

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

While Horner envies McLaren's position of having two frontrunning cars, which Red Bull is yet to have as it tries its luck with Yuki Tsunoda as Verstappen’s latest team-mate, he did feel its equal driver approach also comes with compromises that made it harder for the team to attack the Dutchman.

It pitted third-placed Piastri first because of pressure from behind, leaving Norris to come in on the same lap as Verstappen to negate any strategic options.

"I guess the problem they have is they have two drivers that are fighting for the drivers' championship," Horner offered.

"The difficulty they have is that they've made a bet where they're going to let them race. So that's the compromise that inevitably comes with that."

Asked if Norris could have beaten Verstappen by pitting one lap earlier, he replied: "The undercut was reasonably powerful. There's 'could have, should have, would have', I'm sure, up and down the pitlane.

"I think the majority of the hard work was done on Saturday. I guess 90% of the cars finished in the order that they started in. It was a flat-out sprint race today. There was very low degradation.

"We know the McLarens are very, very fast. And it needed Max to be inch perfect with two very fast McLarens right behind him.

“For 53 laps he made not a single mistake and had the pace to cover them, keep them out of his DRS. I think that's one of Max's best weekends."

Additional reporting by Erwin Jaeggi