Red Bull Formula 1 team principa♕l Christian Horner was left frustrated by the “shades of grey” nature of track limits rules during the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton held off a late 🐷charge from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to claim victory after a thrilling conclusion to the race that saw the two drivers separated by just 0.745s at the flag.

Verstappen had ma🔯naged to find a way past Hamilton with four laps remaining as he swept by with an illegal overtake at Turn 4, before the Dutchman let Hamilto🍨n back through after Red Bull was ordered to hand the lead back by race control.

While Horner ultimately accepted the decision was t🦩echnically the correct one, he was annoyed by its ambig🐬uous nature. Track limits at Turn 4 had been heavily policed throughout practice and qualifying but was not initially monitored during the race.

However, Hamilton was warned at mid-distance by his Mercedes team that he was coming under threat of potentially receiving a penalty if he continued to run ꩲwide through Turn 🃏4, leaving the reigning world champion confused.

“It was frustrating, we could see as soon as Mercedes started to push they just used that part ൩of the track,” Hor𓂃ner said.

“We questioned with race cont🤪rol ‘if that’s the case, can we do it?’ Because when you’re in a nip and tuck battle, there’s a two-tenth advantage using that part of the circuit. So they did it lap after lap.

“The race director then asked them to respect the limits otherw🌱ise they’d get a black and white flag. Obviously Max ran wide on the pass there. It had been made clear before the race thওat if someone got an advantage by going out there, they’d have to give it back.

"He did that immediately and the team instructed him to do it 🎐following race control instructing us. With these track limit things, they’re always going to be contentious but we do need to just have a consistent situation.

“You can’t say it’s ok to use it in the race, but you can’✃t overtake out there. It should be black or white, it shouldn’t be shades of grey.”

But Horner defended Verstappen’s decision to let Hamilton re-pass him on the run to Turn 11, saying hi🌞s driver made the ri🍒ght choice.

“We had an instruction from the race director to give the place bac🅷k immediately - Max was very sporting and did t꧑hat,” Horner explained.

"It was frustrating and Lewis had just enough to retain his position to the end of the race. There’s no guarantee that we could have got the five seconds if that had been the penalty. Sඣo he did the right t꧑hing.”

Asked if he felt Red Bul🤡l ultimately lost the race on strategy, Horner replied: “No, def🍎initely not. Mercedes had very strong pace at the beginning of the race. We couldn’t create a gap to cover them and their degradation looked impressive.

“So Max could never get mor💃e than two seconds clear of Lewis, they pitted early for the undercut, we conceded track position. And going into the race we very fixed our strategy on a two-stop.

“So they obviously went early again on their last stop. We stayed out 10 laps longer.🍌 We had a better tyre for the final stint but unfortunatel🐬y Lewis had just enough to be able to hold on.

“It’s tough 💙to lose a race like that but we have to take a lot of posit♐ives out of the weekend.”