Max Verstappen reflects on losing out in F1 Miami GP while joking, as Christian Horner adds on damage suffered in the loss.
Even though Red Bull’s Verstappen looked calm at the front post the start of the F1 Miami GP, it wasn’t plain sailing for the Dutchman. Both McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc didn’t allow him to go the distance.
In fact, Verstappen wasn’t feeling 100% even before the cone hit. But once he did, he seemingly damaged his underside, which he was only aware of after checking the car when it returned to the garage. Immediately after the race he noted of no damage.
Despite losing, Verstappen was calm about the situation and was happy to see McLaren’s Lando Norris win his first race. The Dutchman was in a joking mood in the press conference where he praised the Brit’s pace all in all and his own lack of pace on the hard tyres.
“I mean, I didn’t really see him in the beginning because I was more focused on Oscar behind and the Ferraris,” said Verstappen to the media. “But then I boxed and I heard the pace that he was doing on the used Mediums. I was like, ‘I mean, that’s quite insane’. I mean, I would have never been able to do so.
“So I knew even if there wouldn’t have been a Safety Car that when he would come out on fresh tyres that I would have had to push on quite a lot to be able to keep him behind. Then actually, I mean, the Safety Car came. Yeah, I mean… It’s racing. Sometimes it works for you, sometimes it works against you.
“And even with that Safety Car, we still had all the opportunities to win today, but we’re clearly not quick enough after that Safety Car. And once I realised that, I just settled in and tried to come home in second. I was just quite poor, I would say, in the race. But also, I never really felt comfortable the whole weekend with it.
“I think on the Medium it was still OK-ish, but on the Hard it was quite a disaster. I mean, just low grip, just very tricky balance in the low-speed. I couldn’t really lean on the rear while in the high-speed I was understeering a lot. So when you have these two issues, you cannot also balance it out because you’re chasing two different things.
“So yeah, just driving to the grip that I had and it was not a lot,” summed up Verstappen, who joked about hitting the cone but understood about the damage post-race. “I didn’t like it, so I decided to take it out and test the durability of the front wing as well,” he continued. “So that’s a crash test done.
“Yeah, there was no damage. The cone was out of the way for everyone, so it was basically a free-for-all after that. It didn’t feel different, so I don’t know. Maybe it was already damaged. I don’t know. I mean I hit that thing and then my pace was the same so I didn’t really know if there was damage.
“[After all the media work was done] when we took the car back to the garage, we also found that the floor was damaged and had a hole in which could have been picked up from hitting the cone,” stated Verstappen, who played down the question when asked ‘what if’ there was no safety car situation and if then Norris would have won or not.
“I mean, it’s always if, if, if, right? If my mum had balls, she would be my dad,” Verstappen joked. “So, yeah. I mean, it’s how it goes to racing. Sometimes it works out for you, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Team boss Horner further elaborated on the lack of pace on Red Bull’s side all-weekend long. He was the one who first brought up the damage suffered to Verstappen where they lost nearly 0.2s per lap. The Brit isn’t sure why the team lacked especially on the hard tyre.
“I don’t think we had a great balance all weekend,” he said. “Obviously, he hit the bollard around lap 20 and that has actually done quite a lot of damage to the underside of the car, so we will have to look at exactly what the effect of that was. It is a reasonable amount of the area around the left rear floor.
“There is a reasonable amount that’s missing and you can see it awfully flexing as well, so it certainly wouldn’t be helping. He lost two-and-a-half-tenths in Turn 1 every lap. Whether that was because of the damage, when you actually see the pictures of what was missing, it wasn’t designed like that.
“But he had enough pace at that point, he was pulling clear of Oscar behind and Lando before he picked up that damage and then, obviously, thereafter we then pitted. And yeah, the safety car came out at the best time for Lando, which gave him essentially a free stop. But, obviously, not great for us because then you’re on tyres six or seven laps older.
“And with the damage, I think that actually second place was actually still a pretty decent result. It is a difficult circuit and how the tyres behave here is quite unique. To get the result we have now is quite positive. Even though he had pole on Friday and Saturday in the sprint race, he was never completely happy with the balance of the car, actually the whole weekend. So to get the result we have had, it is commendable.”
Here’s how F1 Miami GP panned out
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