01/06/2016
NEWS STORY
Red Bull boss Christian Horner insists that his team will learn from a weekend that left it feeling "totally deflated"
"Immediately after the race everybody felt obviously totally deflated," he told the team’s website. "Having been so close to a Monaco victory, to have lost it in a pit lane miscommunication was absolutely gutting.
"Inevitably there's been a huge amount of analysis into what happened, why it happened and also into preventative measures to ensure that it doesn't happen again. But, what's done is done and now our focus firmly moves to the next grand prix, which of course was the scene of Daniel's first victory two years ago.
"With all such things there is never simply one thing that stands out as a root cause," he said of Ricciardo's disastrous pit stop. "It was the culmination of a number factors that came into play during the race… Max's stop, an aborted stop, a change of tyre compound... all of those things contributed to a scenario where ultimately the tyres that were believed to be available were not within the garage, but were in an area that was quite difficult to access and that, of course, led to the tyres not being available to Daniel at the point at which he stopped.
"It was hugely frustrating, but afterwards it was never going to be a finger-pointing exercise. As I said after the race, we win and we lose together as a team. It's a question of understanding what went wrong, working as a team to solve the issue and then taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. In competitive sport you are always pushing right to the edge and that's what happened in Monaco. Now we simply need to make sure that robust procedures are put in place to cover any given scenario."
Asked about the Australian who was inconsolable after the race, Horner said: "He was very emotional and totally gutted to have put in such a great performance but not to have achieved the win.
"You can't turn the clock back, but you can address what's coming. He's third in the championship, he's heading to a venue that holds some fantastic memories for him and hopefully we can again give him a competitive car there."
Despite the misery of Sunday's the weekend wasn't all bad.
"Absolutely," agreed Horner. "First of all, Daniel's performance was immense throughout the weekend. It was a truly sensational pole position lap. In the race, he had very strong pace in the wet and he had strong pace in the dry. Even after the pit stop he was pushing incredibly hard to find a way past Lewis and he never gave up.
"Secondly, the team is pumped that we have a competitive car; that we put it on pole position, that on Sunday we had a car we could really race with. Really, we should have beaten Mercedes fair and square, so I think an awful lot of heart can be taken from that, an awful lot of confidence.
"Finally, the upgraded power unit has delivered exactly what Renault said it would and that's certainly a positive as we head towards more power-related circuits. It gave us exactly what was promised, which was about 0.2s. That certainly helped to achieve pole position, so hats off to everyone in Viry, they are doing a great job at the moment."
"A lot of restructuring and hard work has gone on at Viry over the last six to nine months,", he continued, "and we're just starting to see that the organisational changes there are starting to bear fruits, so it makes sense to extend a relationship that is working well for a further two seasons.
"In pre-season we thought that Toro Rosso would be ahead of us, and certainly Williams, Ferrari and Mercedes," he admitted. "So to be sitting here after six races with three podiums - a third, a second, a win, and what should have really been two wins - is more than anybody could have dreamt of at the start of the year. I think it bodes well for the rest of the season. We're nine points behind Ferrari in the Constructors' Championship and there's still a long way to go."