Christian Horner is now the most accessible team boss for TV as Toto Wolff hides from the tactical ‘in the moment’ discussions with TV pundits. Horner is regularly the pitwall expert live on Sky F1 during qualifying and the race taking ‘in the moment’ questions and discussing his team’s current tactics. Following the Formula 1 2022 Spanish GP he admitted his team was ‘lucky’ to grab the race win.

By way of contrast Wolff is never even sat on the Mercedes team pit wall, preferring to seclude himself away in the back of the garage. One could conclude Toto is less confident in his knowledge to deal with the ‘on the sport’ questions the F1 TV experts ask.

Christian Horner admitted to Sky F1 Following the race that his team were lucky and Ferrari made a mistake when the safety car was deployed. Max Verstappen in that moment had passed the pit lane entry and was committed to stay on the current hard tyre strategy to the end of the race.

Yet Ferrari in P2 and P3 could have pitted one or both of their drivers and created an Abu Dhabi 2021 style battle to the finish over the last few laps.

“After the safety car [was deployed] we were quite lucky Ferrari didn’t pit and take on a new tyre, because they could have probably gone on the soft tyre,” admitted Horner.

Clearly had one of the Ferraris pitted under the safety car and switched to the newer soft tyre they would have breezed past Verstappen on his worn and slower hard tyres at the safety car restart – resulting in a probable 1-2 for the Red Team.

As TJ13 wrote yesterday, Red Bull are the current masters of strategy in F1 and Ferrari again need to be faster in their live scenario management and thus raise their game.