Home F1 Verstappen had the bird stuck in his brake duct in Canadian GP

Max Verstappen, Christian Horner — MONTREAL, QUEBEC - JUNE 18: Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (1) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB19 on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Canada at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on June 18, 2023 in Montreal, Quebec. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images) // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool // SI202306180980 // Usage for editorial use only //

Verstappen had the bird stuck in his brake duct in Canadian GP

19/06/2023

Max Verstappen had a bird stuck in his brake duct for most part of F1 Canadian GP after he hit it in the early part of the race.

Perhaps the only way that Verstappen could have lost the F1 Canadian GP was an external hit. It happened as well just after the Virtual Safety Car period ended when the Red Bull driver reported of a bird hit on his radio but suffered no significant performance loss.

The world feed too couldn’t catch it but replays on F1 TV showed the moment Verstappen ran over the bird at the exit of Turn 4 and approach to Turn 5. The onboard showed the bird stationery on the kerbs when the Dutchman ran over it.

It eventually got stuck in his front right brake duct as revealed by team boss Christian Horner. Post-race, Verstappen was seen checking the front right with a mechanic in the parc ferme. “It was still stuck on my car when I came in, it didn’t look great.

“I also feel sorry for the mechanic having to remove it,” said Verstappen to Sky Sports F1 when asked about the bird hit, as Horner added: “The biggest moment he had was hitting a bird that did half the race behind the front right brake duct.”

The photo of the dead bird was circulated on social media too (in the link below). It seemingly didn’t affect the performance of Verstappen as much despite the remains being stuck. Verstappen did have moments, but it didn’t look like a huge problem.

Eventually he took a comfortable win, even though Alonso looked to be pushing towards the end. “I didn’t really know what to expect because of the track in general,” said Verstappen. “So it had nothing to do with competitors or whatever.

“But just for myself as well. Because also we changed the car quite a bit. We changed the car around quite a bit compared to Friday, so I didn’t really know how it would feel. But yeah, luckily, it went in the right direction. But I think it was quite tough to keep the tyres in the right window, they were always running quite cold.

“So we had to push actually quite hard on the tyre. And then with low grip, low rubber, it was not the easiest or most straightforward. But yeah, everything went well, just the hard tyre. Probably that stint was a bit of a limitation, because of the harder compound, even harder to keep the tyre temps.

“And I think we know that our car normally is very good when there’s high deg compared to other cars. And today probably you would have needed a car which is a bit harder on the tyre, to keep the temperatures in. So it’s probably not been our best race. But still, to win by nine seconds, I think shows that we have a great car,” summed up Verstappen.