Another grand prize, another unequivocal victory for Max Verstappen and Red Bull. After a weak weekend in Canada, which he still won, he is back in the limelight and with a big smile on his face. All this despite a flurry of reports of rivals closing in on the Red Bulls. Verstappen admitted on Sunday that he was amused by such claims.
Verstappen’s drive was a total display of power and dominance. He showed it in the final laps of the race when he asked his team for an extra pit stop to earn a point for the fastest lap of the race. The team didn’t like it and didn’t want to risk something happening during the pit stop, but in the end he waved his hand. We will win anyway, they said to each other on the pit wall.
If not for that, the Dutchman would have won again with a lead of more than 20 seconds. Max Verstappen he tells his opponents: I’m not going anywhere, keep calm, opponents. Is that so. The competition is not catching up to Red Bull, the journalists noted, and he agreed. “Exactly. But I was amused by all the articles that wrote about it.”
“On some weekends it works out better, on other weekends it works out worse. From my point of view, the race in Montreal was not exactly fantastic. I think we’ve done a really good job here, so it’s natural that the gap between us is bigger.” evaluated the soon-to-be three-time world champion.
“It was a very positive weekend for us,” he continued in front of the F1.com microphone. “It’s always a bit more hectic with this sprint format, but our team did everything right. We had a really good car today. We took exemplary care of the tires and got into a rhythm.”
Max Verstappen also had a bit of bad luck on Sunday when race management started the VSC stage. Unlike the riders at the back, he did not have time to head to the pits and in the second round he probably did not want to risk that the VSC phase would end when he was standing next to his mechanics. He stayed on the track until the 24th lap, after which he fell behind a pair of drivers from Maranello. Stats fans will be sorry to see his string of laps at the front of the race snapped. I wish he could last a few more laps on the track…
“The VSC phase made it complicated for several cars in terms of strategy, but we stuck to our own plan. That worked well too,” he doesn’t care Verstappen. When asked if he would have beaten Ferrari regardless of the strategic moves of the Ferrari pit wall, he answered without hesitation. “Yes, we had good speed. It wouldn’t matter what strategy they chose, we had the upper hand over them in the race.”
At Monday’s briefing, however, Red Bull will have to attend to one thing, and that is the aforementioned last pit stop. Imagine if the marshals had discovered three more limit violations by Max Verstappen after the race. Red Bull could almost beat his head against the wall that he allowed the Dutchman an extra stop in the pits: instead of a 25-second lead, he had only 5.155sk advantage at the finish line. He would still win, but it would be a close call. And unnecessarily.
Verstappen however, at the time of the interview, he was unaware of Aston Martin’s protest, so he grinned from ear to ear: “They heard in my voice that I wanted to stop. Fortunately, they called me to the pits.”
“It didn’t seem like a risk to me, but they were probably more nervous in the team. But I saw my lead and I say: We have to stop, I want to set the fastest lap when we have the opportunity. And we finally did that. It may have looked like a big risk from the outside, but I didn’t feel that way in the car.” he finally revealed.
2023-07-02 18:49:11
#Verstappen #amused #articles #competition #closing #Red #Bull #Magazine #F1online.sk
