ValeVida46 wrote: ↑12 Apr 2023, 13:12
chrisc90 wrote: ↑12 Apr 2023, 11:24
Then you cold say Russell knows more about the RB19 than what Christian does if you want to go down that route. George made a comment, then Christian shut him completely down.
George can say what he likes about the sport, and won't ever be shut down by a team boss other than his own. In much the same way Horner can say what he likes and won't be shut down by anyone aside from his superiors.
Hyperbolic "shutting down" of anyone is just silly.
Agreed, Horner didn't "shut down" anything whatsoever. He made a petty dig at Mercedes, which is something he's done ad nauseum.
Especially hard to take Horner's word at face value when Max himself basically stated (in a less politically-motivated way than Russell) that he's holding back to protect the car/tires. Whether he's holding back even more than just to protect the tires, we won't know until another team (or Checo? lol) is able to mount more of a challenge against him.
From Max's interview with Rosanna Tennant after Australia:
Tennant - "Are you pushing it as much as you can, or are you slightly holding back so that the head honchos don't kind of put you at a disadvantage come later in the season?"
Verstappen - "I mean I think anyway there's nothing really they can do. I mean we just try to do the best we can, right, with the development of the car. But it's also about pace management because we didn't really know, I think no one really knew how long that hard tire would last. And so it's about just bringing it home because we had a bit of pace I think over the others. And yeah there is no need to try and gain half a second a lap and destroy your tires to the end. Because you never know, like a safety car can happen, red flags, like we had today, and so yeah it's not necessary to risk all that."
Tennant - "And just going back to that very first start if we can remember that far back, it seemed like you had a little bit of trouble getting away. I was a bit worried, then, when we had more restarts you were going to suffer. Is there a clutch problem underlying?"
Verstappen - "No, we just didn't have a good start, not the right - we didn't choose the right procedure, and yeah I was just quite cautious on the first lap. I didn't want to risk getting damage. And the cars behind me they were really aggressive, I mean fair enough. They knew they were not quick enough and so the only chance they have is lap 1 and they took advantage of that."
Tennant - "I love that. And so the only chance to get you now is on a start?"
Verstappen - "Uhhh, at the moment. We don't know what's going to happen in the future races."