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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“I have to pay compliments to the engineering staff and all the support back in the UK, because some big changes were made between the sessions. Max immediately felt it, he said ‘the car just feels more connected, I can feel a bit more grip’ and he’s gone out and really used that. So a phenomenal job.”
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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