Norris was lapping comfortably a couple of seconds ahead of title rival Max Verstappen early on before there was a short team radio discussion where he explained that he was running at ‘pace six’.
His pit wall came back and said: “Ok, in which case we’d like to use a bit of that pace to try and get a five-second gap to Max, if possible, by the mid-teens.”
Norris duly pushed harder and, from being 2.6 seconds ahead at the end of lap eight, he had opened up the five-second advantage within three laps. His advantage over Verstappen in that critical stint was around one second per lap.
Red Bull could offer nothing in return and, by the time Verstappen pitted on lap 29, the Dutchman was 24.7 seconds adrift of the lead car.
That stunning form from Norris was an eye-opener from Horner in revealing the scale of McLaren’s advantage.
“Yeah, that was taking a piss...although I shouldn't say that in any official capacity,” he said, making a joke about the swearing controversy that erupted over the Singapore weekend.
“The pace he had in hand on that tyre at that point in time was…at that point, we've conceded the race on pace.
“Obviously, he [Norris] touched the wall for the first time, then he touched it for the second time. But, obviously, they've got away with it.
“I actually think Max drove a very strong race. That was what we had, which when you consider where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we have made some real progress. But obviously, we've got a lot of work to do before Austin.”
While the first stint was demoralising for Red Bull, Horner says that the team takes away some encouragement from how similar the pace of his car and the McLaren were on the hard tyres that teams switched to for the run to the flag.
“On the first stint they were very quick,” he said. “I think on the hard tyre we looked in better shape, but of course, the gap is way too big by then, at a track that anyway is very hard to overtake.”
McLaren boss Andrea Stella has revealed, however, that the gaps between the cars on the hard may not be truly representative because his squad had instructed Norris to back off and bring the car home.
“In fairness, in the second part of the second stint, our attention was drawn on the fact that as soon as you got behind the backmarkers, the car started to feel tricky,” he explained.
“So, it was all about no issues, no mistakes, no lock-ups. We had seen already in practice that as soon as you are behind a slow car, things look like there's something wrong with the car: it's just the effect of the dirty air.
“The focus was entirely on bringing the car home. We suggested to Lando to have an attempt at the fastest lap, which he achieved. But after that, we didn't want to talk about fastest lap anymore.”
