Red Bull even quicker than expected in Malaysia - Horner

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admits his team did not expect to be as quick as it was in the Malaysia Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen took a comfortable victory.

Starting a net second after Kimi Raikkonen failed to make the start, Verstappen quickly dispatched polesitter Lewis Hamilton on lap four and pulled away to win by over 12 seconds. Although Red Bull had looked strong throughout its long runs during Friday practice, Horner concedes he wasn't expecting such dominant performance in the race.

"We were quicker than we anticipated," Horner said. "We felt we were in good shape, we saw that the car was very good its tires on Friday, it was very quick in the high speed. We were running less downforce than the others – we don't have the T wing or the Carry wing on here, and we found a very good setup and the drivers have delivered their bit as well.

"I think we had the pace on all of the cars. Sebastian [Vettel] was quick at the end of the race because he ran his race back to front, but I didn't see any pace in clear air today that they had on the supersoft or soft tire that was quicker than we were capable of doing. All weekend the car has been in very good shape."

Horner was full of praise for Verstappen's performance as the 20-year-old delivered the second grand prix victory of his career.

"It is really satisfying, particularly with Max who was last on the podium at the beginning of April in race 2 – he has endured so much bad luck this year. He's kept his head down. The race he drove was truly dominant, and the pass he made on Lewis early on was a key moment. From that moment he controlled the race exceptionally to the finish."

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With Daniel Ricciardo finishing third but unable to chase down Hamilton ahead of him, Horner says a "small loss" of performance from a floor issue added to a slightly different strategy had an impact on his on-track position.

"It was a pretty straightforward race and we were able to cover whatever Lewis did. With Daniel we tried to give him a better tire, which is why we left him a little longer for the back end of the race. Thankfully he had enough pace when Sebastian closed in pretty quickly on that supersoft tire, which was the quicker tire at that point in the race.

"Once Seb caught Daniel it seemed like he lost a bit of pace in the middle sector, and he had one go into Turn 1, which Daniel defended pretty robustly. It looked like he broke his spirit a little bit following that move."