How McLaren's weakness became Max Verstappen and Red Bull's strength at the F1 Japanese GP, according to Christian Horner

Red Bull's Christian Horner feels that McLaren's weakness, where the team has promised both drivers equal status, is what ended up hurting the team and handed Max Verstappen the win in Japan. The race in Suzuka was an interesting one, where the Dutch driver flipped the apple cart by beating both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to secure pole position.

Even though Verstappen secured pole position, picking the Red Bull driver as the favorite for the race would always be a gamble, primarily because McLaren had a faster car. With both Norris and Piastri right on Verstappen's tail, the team had a bit of strategic leeway where it could box the Dutch driver into a strategy by triggering an undercut.

However, before McLaren could do so, Mercedes pulled the trigger and brought George Russell to the pits for new tires. This meant that McLaren's option got narrower, and we had Piastri pit for new tires a lap after, and both Verstappen and Norris pitted on the subsequent lap.

This rigid strategy meant the only opportunity to attack Max Verstappen strategically was lost. Talking about McLaren's strategy, Red Bull boss Christian Horner told Autosport that this resulted from the team's promise to both drivers to give them equal opportunity. Something like this becomes a weakness in marginal calls and ends up helping Verstappen. Horner said:

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

Looking back on the race weekend, the Red Bull boss did feel that most of the work was done by Verstappen when he secured pole position and beat the McLaren duo.

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Christian Horner feels Max Verstappen accomplished the majority of the work during Suzuka qualifying

Once qualifying was done, overtaking around Suzuka is very hard, and that meant Max Verstappen could manage his pace and keep Lando Norris at arm's length until the checkered flag, as per Christian Horner (via Autosport):

"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 Verstappen 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."

Verstappen has now closed the gap to Norris to within one point. The Dutch driver won't go down without a fight in the title battle by the looks of it.