Christian Horner ranks Imola result one of Red Bull's "best ever"

Verstappen and Perez in Imola — Photo: © LAT Images

Emilia Romagna Grand Prix

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Horner ranks Imola result one of Red Bull's "best ever"

Sam Hall

Monday 25 April 2022 09:10

Christian Horner has hailed the one-two success of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as one of Red Bull's "best ever results".

Verstappen led home the team's first one-two finish since the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix after pulling a comfortable margin over Perez and the chasing Charles Leclerc in the early stages at Imola.

The team's previous one-two at Sepang was led by Daniel Ricciardo with Verstappen second after Lewis Hamilton saw his championship dreams all but disappear as his Mercedes power unit erupted.

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With the extra points on offer from the sprint, Red Bull claimed 58 from a possible 59 points on offer, a record haul for a single F1 weekend.

"It's fantastic, it's one point off a maximum score across the whole weekend," said Horner.

"It was just the rebound we needed after Australia and was a phenomenal team performance.

"We took a bit of a risk coming into the weekend with a couple of small parts that we introduced to the car, which is always tricky when you've only got one session.

"We attacked the weekend from the word go and both drivers have been unbelievable.

"Picking ourselves up after the disappointment of Australia, to come back with a result like that, here in Imola, is one of our best ever results."

Red Bull confidence through Ferrari failure

Although there has been little to split Ferrari and Red Bull so far this season, Carlos Sainz's lap one retirement and a late error from Leclerc limited the Scuderia to just 20 points across the weekend.

Aware of the impact the Imola event has had on the championship picture, Horner explained: "It's so early in the championship, there's going to be swings and roundabouts. The DNFs have been costly for Max but it's a long season.

"It was important for us to take points off Ferrari which we've done in both championships. We'll take a lot of confidence out of this weekend and try and build on it in Miami in two weeks' time."