(Motorsport-Total.com) – The censorship officer had a lot to peep over on Saturday afternoon in Monaco: The word “Fuck” or “Fucking” came up six times on Max Verstappen’s radio after he made his final attempt in Q3 (Formula 1 2021 live in the ticker) had to cancel due to the red flag. The Dutchman was pissed off and could not be reassured by the fact that competitor Lewis Hamilton was only seventh.
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In the tunnel, Max Verstappen thought he was still on pole
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He knew that he would have a very good chance of pole position, which is very important in Monaco. “I was one and a half tenths ahead before I went into the tunnel and knew that I had made a mistake at Turn 10/11 on the lap before that. I lost more than a tenth then. I knew that I was in pole position therefore is tangible, “he argues.
“I also had a lot more grip on the tires, so the last sector would have been an improvement. But that would have been, if. That doesn’t interest me,” says Verstappen. “The fact is that there was a red flag.”
And the dirty Red Bull has a good chance of pole position. Because until then, the team had planned everything around this one attempt and even calculated a worse first attempt for it.
First attempt under suboptimal conditions
Red Bull knew that it would be better for the tire temperatures if you did two warm-up laps and only then went on the fastest lap. Because that is not possible twice in the shorter Q3, Verstappen only drove a warm-up lap in the first run – which counted in the end.
Despite the poor preparation, Verstappen was very satisfied with the first attempt: “I drove a pretty good lap. That was very satisfactory,” says the Dutchman. “But I knew that the last lap on the second set of tires would be important.”
“I think that nobody set a really good time on the first lap, and that’s how it was planned: drive two laps and the third is your fastest,” says Verstappen. “Everything went very well until, of course, the red flag cost us our chance at pole.”
Verstappen admits that this strategy was quite risky because you could always expect a red flag in Monaco. “Of course you just have a red flag here, but you don’t expect that. You always plan around the best possible strategy, and it actually worked well,” he says.
Why Red Bull can live with the result
After a period of consideration, however, Verstappen can live quite well with second place. Because he sees it this way that we have made good progress since training on Thursday. “I have to thank everyone in the factory and on the track. You have done a fantastic job in giving me the car that I want,” said the Red Bull driver.
“Because on Thursday we were still far away, which I didn’t expect. I thought that the car’s characteristics would be pretty good here,” he says. “But luckily we found that today.”
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The fact that Ferrari would play such a big role this weekend is both a curse and a blessing for the racing team. On the one hand, they lost pole position to Scuderia, on the other hand, it also has something positive: “If we are putting more cars between us and Lewis at the moment, that’s good,” says team principal Christian Horner.
So the anger was quickly gone when you saw that the Mercedes driver would only start in seventh place – a big mortgage in Monaco. “The first disappointment is of course that we should have gotten the lap. You know how important pole is here,” said team principal Christian Horner. “But you have to consider the glass half full, not half empty.”
“It’s always important to get a lot of points, but of course you also have to be as far ahead of your main rivals as possible,” says Verstappen. “The day was good in that respect. But we have to bring that home on Sunday too.”
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