Max Verstappen pokes fun at the media articles as he and Christian Horner talk of strategy, fastest lap in F1 Austrian GP.
Seven up for the defending world champion as he heads towards his third title in a row. It is sometimes hard to believe in some ways but Verstappen really is a cut above the rest with 42 wins against his name after another one in F1 Austrian GP.
The Canadian GP saw a scenario where the chasing pack thought they were catching the Austrian team but Red Bull’s home Grand Prix in Austria proved massively otherwise. Verstappen was nearly 24 seconds ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc before his late pit.
The Dutchman poked fun about the articles that he read of F1 rivals catching up. “Exactly, but I loved all the articles about it,” said Verstappen. “Yeah, I mean, some weekends they work a bit better for you and some don’t. And for me, Montréal wasn’t that fantastic in the race, from our side”.
“And here, I think we did a really good job and then naturally the gap is a bit bigger.” It was not all plain sailing really though as around the VSC timing, both Ferraris pitted while Verstappen did not. It must have been food for thought for Red Bull but they stuck to their plans that they had decided ahead of the F1 race.
“We just stick to our plan,” said Verstappen. “I mean, you have these calculations before, if there’s a Safety Car or Virtual Safety Car. And for us, it made sense to just go, because I think we had good tyre life. Already, the few laps before the VSC came out, I was definitely pulling even more of a gap over as every single lap”.
“That’s why I wasn’t really worried about it. I just completed my stint that I had to do on the Medium. And then, when I came out on the Hard tyre, I immediately felt that tyre was not the better tyre, but you have to complete a stint on it. I mean the Soft, was not going to last, so once I got past Carlos, I just… yeah”.
“The way you manage your stint I was just naturally closing in on Charles because of my tyre life advantage and probably also just a general pace advantage. So yeah, just step by step, catching-up,” summed up Verstappen as Red Bull team boss Horner also concurred with the Dutchman about the strategy while praising his drive during the whole weekend.
“A great weekend, qualifying, the sprint race and now the Grand Prix,” said Horner to media. “The strategy was slightly different to our competitors and then we had to make the overtake on track as well which if you look at the replay I think he was actually waving at Charles as he passed so a stunning weekend for him.
“It is the first time we have been back here since Dietrich passed. It was a great team win today and we decided to go for the fastest lap on the last lap despite the risk involved of fluffing a pitstop but no risk no fun and the mechanics have been in such great form, it seemed risk free. If it had been a full safety car, we would have pitted.
“The VSC we felt that gave us such an offset and we had such a different race in the cars we were competing with. We managed to surprise so many cars that pitted on the VSC as they pitted early on a two stop and was they pitted both Ferrari’s early and so on, so for us it actually worked very well and then we conceded track position at times but with the tyre advantage it provided it worked out fine,” summed up Horner.
But by far and away the most amusing piece was to go for the fastest lap at the end which at that stage was held by his teammate Sergio Perez. It still could have been a risk however. “That wasn’t planned,” said Verstappen. “To me not, but to the team, I think they were a little bit more nervous”.
“But I mean, I saw the gap and I was like ‘we have to pit, I want to go for the fastest lap’. When you have the opportunity, you know…And that’s what we did at the end. I mean, from the outside maybe it looks like a big risk. But when you’re in the car… For me, it didn’t feel like a risk at all,” summed up Verstappen.
Horner revealed of mini discussion about it but they eventually allowed it to happen. “It was a bit of a discussion, risk versus reward, cool the tyres down and do it the easier way of not taking the risk of a pit stop which…400 things can go wrong with it,” he said. “And the Max was making his opinion quite clear.
“He stated, ‘the tyres were fucked’, and he was quite focused and then you look at the risk. Do we take the risk on a below par set of tyres or is it actually less risk to take the pit stop and put on a set of softs? So in the end we said, let’s take the risk and he still had three seconds margin over Charles when he came out of the pit lane.”
Here’s revised Austrian GP results
Here’s how F1 Austrian GP panned out
Here’s Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen on development ban