Red Bull boss Christian Horner said Max Verstappen had no hard feelings once he'd been given the chance to understand the thinking behind his race strategy at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Verstappen finished fifth after losing a position in the pit stops to teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who went on to finish third. Verstappen pitted relatively early on lap 32 from fourth in order to try to undercut Valtteri Bottas, which had been running third since the start, but the strategy did not pay off as Mercedes followed suit and pitted a lap later.
Ricciardo pitted on lap 38, giving him some time in free air to set some quick laps and emerge ahead of the battle between Verstappen and Bottas. At that moment Verstappen, who had dropped from fourth to fifth, radioed his team, saying "what a [censored] [censored] disaster" but Horner said he had calmed down by the end of the race.
"Of course when emotions are running high in the car, of course you'd expect him [to be angry], he had just seen his teammate go from behind him to being ahead of him and in a podium position, so of course he was excited on the radio," Horner said. "But having looked at the facts and understanding the circumstances of how and why these things happen, he could understand the scenario and he was understanding that today it didn't work for him and one day it will go for him."
Horner said Verstappen's early stop had been inspired by the pace of Sergio Perez in the Force India, who had made the switch to super-soft tyres on lap 16 in order to replace a damaged front wing.
"We looked at Sergio Perez's out lap, which had been pretty impressive, and rather than just sitting behind Valtteri and not trying anything, we thought 'OK, there is some traffic coming up, we can see the cars are quite badly affected by the traffic'.
"We saw Ferrari take a bit of a hit in performance, so we went for the undercut. If the car had been square in the pitlane, if we'd had had a perfect stop, if we'd had a good getaway ... we looked like we gave approximately a second away in the pit lane. Not in the stop, in the pit lane itself, so that was the difference."
After Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel swapped position on track in similar circumstances, much of the talk after the race was about whether Ferrari and Red Bull had favoured one driver over another. Horner said the key to keeping both drivers happy was having a clear explanation for the team's decisions after the race.
"So long as the drivers can see the transparency of what happened," Horner said. "Let's not forget 12 months ago, Daniel was sat here in a position where he was pretty frustrated [after losing the race win at a pit stop]. But once presented with the facts that are open and honest, I think any intelligent driver can deal with that. That's always been our policy -- transparency and presenting the facts."