Helmut Marko explains Red Bull’s last-minute switch to a three-stop strategy in F1 Spanish GP. Red Bull originally planned a two-stop strategy for Verstappen in Spain.

The behind-the-scenes story is interesting: Red Bull did not begin the Spanish GP intending to run a three-stop race. The strategy designed by the Milton Keynes engineers was aligned with that adopted by McLaren, who then achieved a brilliant one-two finish with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

Helmut Marko, speaking as usual on Servus TV after the GP, revealed what happened inside the world champion’s team.
“Decisions are made on the pit wall, but there’s also an operations room in Milton Keynes with 70 technicians working behind the scenes. We went into the race with a two-stop strategy, but after about ten laps, we realized our tyres were degrading and we couldn’t keep up with McLaren.”

So, the brilliant idea to switch to a three-stop strategy hadn’t been planned in advance?
“We changed strategy because we still had enough fresh tyres. That decision was absolutely right: after the third stop, we were just one second behind Lando Norris on new tyres. Up to that point, everything had gone smoothly. Max got stuck in traffic once, I think behind Oliver Bearman, but he made up those two seconds.”

Then the safety car was needed for Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, which suffered an engine failure…
“It came at the worst possible time for us. At that point, we only had one set of new tyres left, a set of hards, and one set of softs with about seven laps on them. The mistake – and it was a mistake – was choosing the hard compound. The alternative would have been to stay out.”

How could the race outcome have changed?
“The two McLarens would have overtaken us, but we could have kept Leclerc behind. Or even better, we could have used the softs that already had seven laps. But the assumption was that the new tyre would have a performance peak – that is, one or two laps with significantly better performance. In reality, the safety car period lasted a long time, and then Oscar Piastri, who’s a very clever driver, drove very slowly under the safety car. And the slower the pace, the more the tyre temperature dropped. The hard was simply too slow and wouldn’t warm up. You could see Max nearly lost the car going into Turn 7.”

Max complained on the radio as soon as he saw the white tyres…
“The explanation was simple: it was the only new set left. But the reasoning behind it was flawed: it was taken for granted that a new tyre is automatically better than a used one.”

In the end, who was to blame?
“It was a team decision. It was based on the information available and was made collectively by the team.”