Late race starts concern Red Bull
Milton Keynes, Sunday: Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has claimed that the decision to move the start times of Grands Prix in both Australia and Malaysia will impact negatively on his team, particularly upon young superstar Sebastian Vettel.
Horner is worried that the scheduled 5pm race starts for the races in Melbourne and Sepang will “disrupt the routine” of Vettel, 3 months, meaning that his perfornances will be significantly impaired.
Concerned: Red Bull boss Christian Horner
“Five o’clock is usually naptime for Sebastian,” Horner revealed to journalists earlier today. “Obviously with someone so young, it is important for us to establish a routine so that he can settle in to normal patterns of waking and sleeping at a very early stage.
“We don’t want to have to get our mechanics out of bed at three in the morning because Sebastian has woken up, thanks to the race organisers messing around with his daily schedule.”
The decision to move the race starts to later in the day was taken to optimise the time of the race with peak viewing periods in Europe, but Horner claims that the change was made without proper consultation of the teams.
“If we’d been given the chance to object, we would have,” Horner said. “Really this is quite unfair on Sebastian, he needs lots of rest at his age and denying him that will seriously dent his performances, not only now but probably in the future as well.
“In any case, it all seems a bit pointless, messing around with his sleeping patterns just so he can drive a few laps in a car that usually breaks down fairly swiftly anyway.”
Questions about how the youthful German was supposed to cope with jet lag, given that he will be flying all over the world this season, were waved away as “irrelevant.”
