It was a strong day for Oracle Red Bull Racing despite not taking pole position during qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix. Both drivers of the team will take grid penalties on race day, meaning Max Verstappen will start seventh, with his team-mate Sergio Pérez six places behind him in thirteenth. Red Bull, and Verstappen in particular, are looking for their fifth consecutive Grand Prix win as they close in on both Championship titles.
Red Bull Team Principal, Christian Horner, is relishing the challenge of starting further down the grid and believes they have put themselves in a good position for the race by compromising their qualifying pace.
“We knew in qualifying Ferrari would be particularly strong and that proved to be the case. We had to compromise qualifying slightly to give the drivers a better race car tomorrow, so we’ll see if that trade pays off.
“I think it’s still tricky to overtake here, Spa for sure is the easiest to overtake, but theoretically we should be able to get into an overtaking position although it’s certainly not going to be straight forward.
“We’ve strategically taken the penalties at the best race we can considering where we are in the season as we didn’t want to do it at Singapore or Japan given the difficulty in overtaking.
“We have a strong race car though, so hopefully we can make some good progress tomorrow. A mixed up grid could mean a very exciting race tomorrow, we’ve taken two sets of new softs – so have Ferrari and it will be fascinating to see how that plays out.”
