Christian Horner has admitted that Red Bull “rolled the dice” with an offset strategy for Max Verstappen during the Monaco Grand Prix, with the team extending the Dutchman’s final stint before making a compulsory second stop on the penultimate lap amid the “jeopardy” posed by the new regulation.
After lining up in fourth place on the grid – having been promoted one spot owing to Lewis Hamilton’s three-place penalty – Verstappen ran a long opening stint on the hard tyre before bolting on the medium compound.
And while others were making a second visit to the pits – as part of a regulation change that required every driver to make two pit stops during the race in Monte Carlo – the World Champion remained out on track for as long as possible, meaning that he led the race for much of the latter stages before finally heading to the pits on the penultimate lap of the event.
This saw Verstappen cross the line in fourth – with McLaren’s Lando Norris taking victory ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and the other papaya car of Oscar Piastri – and Horner believes that the plan was the best call should there have been any incidents during the closing stages of the Grand Prix.
Verstappen took fourth place in Monaco, having spent much of the latter stages of the race in the lead owing to his offset strategy
“We rolled the dice a little bit today,” Horner explained after the race. “Starting on the hard [tyre] our tactic was always to go long, with the main opportunity being Safety Cars or red flags, which can sometimes be the case here.
“Max led large portions of the race, but it was one of those Monacos where everybody pretty much behaved. So, yeah, the first stop, we got pretty close to Oscar at one point. He had a wobble on his second lap out after his pit stop but we would have been at best alongside, so we decided, look, we’ll keep going, let’s keep going.
“The upside was, if there’d have been a Safety Car or red flag, Max would have led. Then, again, we had the medium tyre [for the second stint], went very, very long, obviously stopped on the last lap, and again, you’re just hanging out for a Safety Car or VSC [Virtual Safety Car] or red flag at that point.”
Reflecting on the strategy of Verstappen’s team mate Yuki Tsunoda – who started from P12 on the grid and ended the race down in P17 – Horner added: “For Yuki, we did the inverse – Lap 1 initially looked like he would get a significant benefit from it, but then everybody started to drive extremely slowly as they started to play around with the tactics.
It was a difficult race in Monte Carlo for Verstappen’s team mate Tsunoda
“So he was basically on the same set of tyres for the whole race and did his fastest laps at the end there when he finally got some clear traffic. He was just sat in a queue the entire race, so a very difficult day today.”
In terms of how much the two pit stop rule affected the action of the race, Horner commented: “It was strategically more interesting [than last year]. There was more jeopardy to it.”
And when pushed on how much more of a challenge the squad had faced in trying to plan for their strategy beforehand, the Team Principal continued: “It was very dynamic.
“You’re looking at all the different scenarios and it’s starting to play out in front of you, what the others are doing with Williams and obviously Racing Bulls, and the teams that worked as a pair that had cars close together benefitted today, most of them.
“Usually you make the one stop and then you’ve just got your fingers crossed for reliability to the end of the race, [but] here there was a bit more going on.”
Race Highlights: 2025 Monaco Grand Prix
Now the attentions of the paddock switch to the Spanish Grand Prix – marking the final stop of a triple header sequence – and Horner is hopeful that Red Bull can repeat the success they experienced in Imola, where Verstappen scored his second victory of the season.
“Let’s see,” Horner answered when asked how confident he was feeling about the team’s prospects in Barcelona. “We always knew coming here [to Monaco] would expose some of our car’s…. it was never going to be our strongest circuit.
“So going back to Barcelona, I hope we can replicate closer to what we did in Imola. We only gave away three points to the championship leader today, so we’re still within a race win with, what,16 races still to go.
“There’s an enormous amount of racing [left], plus the Sprint races, etc, etc, so there’s a long, long way to go in this championship.”
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