Frederic Vasseur is of the view that if pressured Max Verstappen he may make mistakes to allow others to win F1 races and championships.
Most of the F1 2023 season saw Red Bull’s Verstappen under no pressure apart from few odd races where he had teammate Sergio Perez and or the likes of Aston Martin, Mercedes, Ferrari and or McLaren drivers hustling for brief moment.
It was rare that they could consistently the pressure on Verstappen for full length rather than selective points in the races. That helped the Dutchman to gain confidence and run under less tension where he wasn’t too worried about competition.
Ferrari chief Vasseur believes if they or anyone can put Verstappen under a bit of pressure, the Dutchman will likely make a mistake to open up a chance of rivals to pounce on him. It is not just races, but also pressure of the weekend from the get go.
That will or would have pushed Red Bull to try out things on set-up side and make those mistakes. “It is not sure that anyone has a doubt on this, he did a mega season, he was fighting with Sergio Perez in the first two or three events and then he was on another planet,” said Vasseur when asked about Verstappen and his consistency.
“He didn’t barely do a mistake all season and when he did struggle, like in Jeddah, it was due to a mechanical issue, and then he was always there, always making good starts, no contacts. The only one was Vegas but I think we are getting a bit closer to him. I don’t want to say putting him under pressure because it is not true, in Abu Dhabi he was not under pressure but he was a bit more under pressure than he was in Zandvoort or some other events when he was flying.
“If we want to have Max doing more mistakes perhaps…there is no doubt that he dominated all season and the only issue for us is that as everybody wants, he will do more mistakes if he is under pressure, but nobody was able to put him under pressure this season except us at the last two or three events or Carlos in Singapore. That is where he started to do some mistakes or Red Bull did some mistakes in terms of set-up. We were too far away from putting that kind of pressure on them,” summed up Vasseur.
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