Verstappen had a tough race: "It was not nice"
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen had a poor British Grand Prix. The Dutchman managed to take the lead from Carlos Sainz, but when problems arose with his car Verstappen fell further back. The Red Bull driver did what he could with the damage.
Verstappen explains forced pit stop
"The start was actually good again, but of course I was pushed in. So I had to take my foot off the gas a bit. For the rest, the speed was just good and I got closer and closer to Carlos. It's just hard to follow here. Then he made a mistake, I got ahead of him and a couple of corners later, in turn five, there was a piece of carbon," Verstappen told the Viaplay cameras.
The Red Bull driver explains what happened. The Dutchman suddenly had to enter the pit lane, thinking he had a flat tyre. This caused Verstappen to fall far back. Eventually, it turned out he had a lot of damage, which caused the RB18 to lose a lot of time. As a result, Verstappen was unable to get involved in the fight.
"At the moment I saw it, I couldn't go left or right, so I tried to hit it as straight as possible. That completely tore up the bottom of the left side of the floor. When you are driving and you feel you have lost balance, you lose a lot of lap time. When I got out, I looked under the floor and it was all gone. Especially with these cars where the floor is obviously the most important thing, then of course you lost a lot of downforce."
Verstappen lost a lot of time
Eventually, Verstappen fell back to P6, but he later came in again for a set of hard tyres. The grip was very poor and Verstappen complained on the team radio. In the closing stages of the race, the Dutchman came in once more for soft tyres, but he had to defend against Mick Schumacher until the finish.
"You saw from one lap to the next I just lost one and a half, two seconds. It actually stayed that way throughout the race. It's very tricky, especially on the left. Then all the straight corners are very difficult. Of course, on this track you have a lot of fast corners. It was not good, but in the end I managed to score a few points. If you already have damage and you don't have a good balance in the car, if you then have these hard tyres, you have very little grip. It took me a few laps to get going," Verstappen said.