Max Verstappen reckons they ran the safety car a bit longer than it should have, as he feels good to have secured F1 Chinese GP win.
It was not a very challenging outing for Red Bull’s Verstappen in F1 Chinese GP, but the Dutchman did have to survive the safety car re-starts. He aced both of it and even eked out a solid lead to win comfortably over McLaren’s Lando Norris.
But Verstappen reckoned the safety car was left out fair bit longer than it should have. In the first case, the marshals had to recover the stricken Stake F1 Team car of Valtteri Bottas, while the second one saw them clearing the debris left on the circuit.
He feels it took some fun out of the grand prix as it fixed the strategy for the field behind. “It was just a bit… Just took a long time, I found, to get the first car cleared,” said Verstappen. “And then I felt like we drove one more lap behind the Safety Car for nothing. So I was like, come on, speed up a bit.
“Then, of course, we had another Safety Car and for me it felt, again, that they took a long time to clear, because you want to race, right? And actually then I thought that because of the two Safety Cars it made it a little bit less fun, because you would have seen probably more different strategies between the cars.
“And now everyone was just driving more or less to the end, except I think Fernando was on a Soft, Yeah, made it I guess a little bit more straightforward. So that was a bit of a shame, I guess,” summed up Verstappen, who alerted some of the moments he had which wasn’t caught by the world feed apart from hitting the debris radio call.
“locked up in the second restart into Turn 6, I think, a little bit,” noted Verstappen. “So that was not ideal. Then a threw a tear-off away, which I think I could hear on the intake. It was flapping around hitting my helmet. So I don’t know where it ended up. And with two laps ago, I think I drove over a little bit of debris before Turn 14.
“So that was a little bit scary, because with all the tyres it’s easy to have a puncture at high speed when you drive over carbon. That was it I think.” With the win at Shanghai International Circuit, Verstappen has now victories at 26 different circuits/grands prix, adding even Chinese GP to his tally after finishing third in 2017.
“This was definitely one that I wanted to win,” said Verstappen. “I’ve been on the podium here, but I haven’t won here before, so that was great, for sure. And yeah, I mean, I definitely just enjoyed the whole weekend. It’s been really nice with a great car.
“Throughout the race, I mean, with the Safety Car and stuff, as always, things that you have to do well, the restarts and stuff. I guess they’re tense moments. The actual start, of course, and after that, just a management race, looking after your tyes, trying to extend the gap. So yeah, busy enough, but also enjoyable.”
Here’s how F1 Chinese GP panned out
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