Max Verstappen agrees that the way he scored the F1 Belgian GP win was not right, but having not scored much points in last two races, he will take it.
After the results at Silverstone and Hungaroring, which put Red Bull’s Verstappen behind Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the F1 drivers’ championship, the Dutchman was pleased to on that front to have scored handy points at Spa-Francorchamps ahead of his title rival.
From the eight points deficit, Verstappen brought it down to three points ahead of the Dutch GP this weekend. The happenings in Belgian GP was not ideal for anyone, but the Dutchman reckoned it is crucial for him to take away as many points from Hamilton.
“This is of course not what you like to win, especially not for the people at the side of the track, the fans, as they expect a race, but the conditions were not good,” said Verstappen. “It just kept raining all the time. I think from 3 o’clock onwards it just got worse and worse and when you already start that late in the day there is not much room to move around, even though we still waited for like three hours.
“Unfortunately it didn’t improve. Of course when you are the leading car the visibility is naturally a bit better, so it’s difficult on my side to judge how the others felt. I think at 3.30 I said it was OK to race from my side but of course the visibility behind was very bad and especially I think with the recent events you don’t want to risk a big shunt to happen or even you know the risk of it. It just didn’t feel right.
“Of course the fans won’t agree with what happened, but you also have to think about safety at the end. [From title point of view], we had two races where we didn’t really score points, so we needed a decent result. Of course, again, it’s not how you want to have the result, but still I think the whole weekend we were very competitive, and that’s very important on a track like this with long straights.
“And now we go to Zandvoort, which is new for everyone, so there will be a bit of a question mark over how everyone will be performing and maybe some surprises as well, you never know, but I’m looking forward to it,” summed up Verstappen, who has sixth win of the 2021 F1 season against Hamilton’s four and yet is behind in the standings.
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