Red Bull boss believes the race director should make the call on handing a position back rather than waiting on stewards.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Max Verstappen's actions on Sunday, it followed two calls from his team; the first ordering him to pit under the Safety Car, when he was switched to hards, and the second when he was told to yield position to George Russell, (wrongly) believing that their driver was about to be ordered to do so after perceiving him to have left the track and gained an advantage.
Already frustrated to be on the white-banded rubber, the Dutchman was incensed at being ordered to hand back a position that was rightfully his after holding off the Mercedes in Turn 1.
"It was very, very marginal," admits Horner. "It looked for all intents and purposes that it was going to be a penalty, so therefore the instruction was given to give that place back, which he was obviously upset and annoyed about because he felt that, one, he'd been left no space and, two, that George hadn't been fully in control.
"It's very hard for the team to try and make that call because you're going on historical precedents," he adds. "You're trying to pre-empt what the stewards and the race directors are thinking.
"So, I think it would be beneficial to the teams, in that instance, for the race director to make that call and say you either give it back or you get a penalty, rather than having to try and second-guess what the stewards are going to think."
Asked about the original decision to pit him under the Safety Car, Horner says: "The safety car came out at probably the worst possible time in terms of our strategy, because you're faced with the choice of, do you stay out on an eight-lap old, heavily pushed soft tyre, at which point you would get eaten up at the restart, and it looked like there would be circa ten racing laps left.
"Unfortunately, the only set of tyres that we had available was a new set of hards. Our feeling was that a new set of hards was better than an eight-lap-old, heavily degraded set of softs. You don't want to stay on that set of tyres because you know everybody else has taken a fresh set.
"With 20/20 hindsight, you'd have left him out," he admits. "He would have got passed by the two McLarens. Would he have got passed by Leclerc? You never know.
"You make a decision with the information you have at hand. The risk with going onto the three-stop is that in a safety car scenario, in the last third of the race or quarter of the race, you're exposed."
George Russell, who, like Charles Leclerc, had pitted several laps earlier for softs, has since claimed that had things remained as they were, Verstappen would have probably passed them both by the end of the race as their tyres degraded.
"Max was obviously upset because, first of all, he's had Leclerc take a swipe at him on the straight, and then he's got dive-bombed at Turn 1 by George," said Horner. "And the way that these regulations are now, it's all about where that front axle is.
"We've seen so many occasions this year where penalties have been given. We've seen it been noted and we've seen it gone to the stewards. The next thing is, you're expecting to get a penalty. So that's why it was: 'OK, you know what? We're going to have to give this place up.'"
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