Max Verstappen had a bad British GP. 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.
Max Verstappen had a bad British GP. 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.
"The start was really good again, but of course I was pushed. So I had to take my foot off the gas a little bit. Otherwise, the speed was good and I kept getting closer and closer to Carlos," he said.
"It's hard to follow closely here. Then he made a mistake, I passed in front of him and a few corners later, in turn five, there was a piece of carbon," Verstappen told the Viaplay cameras.
The Dutchman suddenly had to go into the pit lane, thinking he had a flat tire. This caused Verstappen to fall back. Eventually, it was discovered that 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.
"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 the bottom of the left side of the ground. When you're driving and you feel like you've lost your balance, you lose a lot of lap time," Verstappen explained.
"When I got out, I looked under the floorboard and it was all over. Especially with these cars where the floor is obviously the most important thing, so of course you lost a lot of downforce," he continued.
Eventually, Verstappen dropped to P6, but then went back to a set of hard tires. The grip was very bad and Verstappen complained on the team radio. In the final stages of the race, the Dutchman stopped once again to put on soft tires, but had to defend himself against Mick Schumacher until the end.
"You saw from one lap to the next that I lost a second and a half, two seconds. Actually, it stayed that way for the whole race. It's very tricky, especially on the left. So, all the straight turns are very difficult. Of course, on this track you have a lot of fast corners," commented the Red Bull driver.
"It was not good, but in the end I managed to score some points. If you already have damage and you don't have a good balance in the car, if you have these hard tires, you have very little grip. It took me a few laps to get started," Verstappen concluded.