Christian Horner: Red Bull advantage “exaggerated” by soft tyre choice in Bahrain

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has suggested Red Bull’s margin over the rest of the F1 field was “exaggerated” by their choice to use the soft tyre in the second stint of Bahrain Grand Prix.

The reigning champions kicked off 2024 in dominant fashion with a 1-2 finish - their first since the 2023 Italian Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen dominated the race in Bahrain from pole position, winning by over 20 seconds, while Sergio Perez recovered from fifth to secure second ahead of the two Ferraris.

It means F1 could be set for another year of Red Bull domination, just after they nearly went through the entire 2023 campaign invincible.

However, Horner thinks the field will “converge” as the season progresses.

“Again, I’ve been in this business too long to draw too many conclusions from a single race,” he said. “It’s a fantastic start, we’ll enjoy this moment, maximum points score.

“But it’s a long season, many different venues, different challenges, different conditions. And what we saw in the testing is that things are closer.

“Now we got it right this weekend, we took the right cars into the race, we executed a perfect race with both cars and we got a great finish. But I think that it will converge.”

Red Bull were the only team to finish in the top 10 to switch to the softs for the final stint for the race whereas their rivals opted for hards again.

Horner felt that tyre choice handed Red Bull a significant advantage and made the gap bigger than it actually is.

“Yeah but look, everything’s relative, isn’t it? I think Checo came from P5, Max was obviously managing the race as many drivers are managing different tires at different times,” he added.

“It’s not a question of how much you win, it’s a question about winning, and we won today, Max dominated the race, he was in a class of his own.

“Checo drove an outstanding race as well, coming through the field from fifth on the grid, fastest lap, I think the back end of the race was exaggerated by the offset of tires that we carried in, I’m surprised others didn’t carry softs into the race when it was clearly, in these conditions, the better tire to have.”