Helmut Marko said Red Bull were "happy to take" the Monaco Grand Prix win gifted to them by Ferrari 's pit stop mistake.
The Austrian crowed about how the victory was "served to us" when a blunder from the Italian team saw Charles Leclerc called in for a change of tyres, and entered the pit lane before his panicked race engineer told him to stay out. The error saw the Monegasque racer come back out in fourth as he raged over the radio.
To make matters worse for Ferrari, Carlos Sainz had been undercut by Sergio Perez, and the Red Bull ace held on to win a truncated race shortened by Mick Schumacher's horrifying smash. The Mexican was joined on the podium by Sainz in second and team-mate Max Verstappen.
Leclerc and his team were once again left gutted after failing to finish in the top three at his home race due to such a simple error. In contrast, Red Bull adviser Marko was left delighted as his team took advantage of the blunder to record a statement victory.
"I can't judge how they did it internally," he said when asked by Sky Germany about what Ferrari had done. "We were happy to take what was served to us." He went on to praise the Red Bull strategy team, singling out chief strategist Hannah Schmitz for "putting Max ahead of Leclerc".
The Austrian added: "The decisive factor was the strategy. The decisive factor was the calm to stay out, even though other teams had already set the fastest laps on the intermediates."
Meanwhile, team principal Christian Horner has admitted that Leclerc would most likely have gone on to beat both his drivers had it not been for the pit stop fiasco. "Charles in the early laps seemed to have things pretty much under control and had the buffer of his team-mate behind him as well," he said after the race.
"At that point it looked like Ferrari had the race in the bag. I thought we might be able to [overtake] one of them – I didn't think we'd be able to get both of them. And obviously we capitalised on their mistake.
"It's a process, but you have to have effective and clear communication and as a pit wall we had all the information and were using the information well. We were debating whether to go straight from extreme to slick tyres like Lewis [Hamilton] did [to win in 2016] but we decided going through the inters was quicker.
"I've always prided ourselves on us being an attacking race team and we've always focused on doing the basics well. Whether it's strategy or pit-stops, thinking on your feet, and today was all about thinking on feet and reacting to the situation facing you."
