Max Verstappen and Christian Horner at odds over reason for Miami GP setback

Max Verstappen and Christian Horner were left at odds over their differing views on why they fell to defeat at the Miami Grand Prix.

McLaren driver Lando Norris recorded his first Formula 1 win as the United States played host to the latest round of racing. In a rare sight, Verstappen and Red Bull were unable to keep pace with the British star.

After the timing of a safety car allowed Norris to take the lead at the midway point, the 24-year-old was able to hold off his Dutch rival and even open up a gap of seven seconds in his 110th attempt at finishing top of the podium.

Red Bull team principal Horner believes that the damage suffered when Verstappen hit a bollard could have played a pivotal role. The three-time F1 champion 'lost two-and-a-half tenths every lap in turn one', Horner suggested in the aftermath.

"I don't think we had a great balance all weekend," he explained, "Obviously, he hit the bollard around lap 20 and that has actually done quite a lot of damage to the underside of the car, so we will have to look at exactly what the effect of that was.

"It is a reasonable amount of the area around the left rear floor. There is a reasonable amount that's missing and you can see it awfully flexing as well, so it certainly wouldn't be helping."

Horner added: "But he had enough pace at that point, he was pulling clear of Oscar [Piastri] behind and Lando before he picked up that damage and then, obviously, thereafter we then pitted. And yeah, the safety car came out at the best time for Lando, which gave him essentially a free stop.

Lando Norris laughs with Max Verstappenin the post-race press conference
(Image: Getty Images)

"But, obviously, not great for us because then you're on tyres six or seven laps older. And with the damage, I think that actually second place was actually still a pretty decent result."

In contrast, Verstappen's reasoning was more concerned with issues he felt across the whole weekend. The 26-year-old, who still extended his world championship lead to 33 points over teammate Sergio Perez, pointed to his struggle to retain grip across the weekend.

“I never really felt comfortable the whole weekend with it,” he said. “I think on the medium it was still OK-ish, but on the hard it was quite a disaster.

"I mean, just low grip, just very tricky balance in the low-speed. I couldn't really lean on the rear while in the high-speed I was understeering a lot. So when you have these two issues, you cannot also balance it out because you're chasing two different things. So yeah, just driving to the grip that I had and it was not a lot.”