Max Verstappen goes into the summer break with a hefty points lead – there’s a reason he thinks it’s great that he suddenly has so many rivals
Max Verstappen had already announced it immediately after getting out of the car in Spa: In his opinion, Red Bull has “a lot of work” to do in the coming weeks: “I think there are things that we can perhaps do differently, or things that we have brought to the car that we can analyze. And yes, we will do that now over the break,” confirmed the Dutchman.
Because the current Red Bull performance may not be enough to clinch the fourth title in a row – possibly because the other teams are taking a lot of points away from each other due to the close gaps and the pecking order in the four-way battle at the front, which changes from race to race.
“It’s fantastic. I mean, of course I’d much rather have it like this than this one team that suddenly dominates every race,” says Verstappen, who is relieved that after McLaren’s superior one-two victory in Hungary, Mercedes’ Silver Arrows were suddenly at the front this weekend at Spa.
For Verstappen, this means that although he was only able to start eleventh due to his engine penalty, he even extended his championship lead over Lando Norris by two points to 78 points by finishing fourth. The fact that he finished ahead of his closest rival at the end of the race came as something of a surprise, even for Verstappen
Ahead of Norris: Verstappen himself surprised
“I mean, he probably didn’t have the best first lap. I don’t know what happened there. But yes, of course that’s what I look at the most. Because some of the other guys have also delivered some great races, but they are quite far behind in the championship,” says the Red Bull star, aware of his comfortable lead of 100 points and more over the three podium drivers on Sunday, Leclerc, Piastri and Hamilton.
“At the moment, the car is probably not the fastest in the race, so for me it’s just about limiting the damage and being as close as possible every time,” says Verstappen, explaining his current battle plan. “We did that recently, but of course I generally hope that we can find a bit more performance again, because that would make our lives easier in the races.”
For Verstappen, the fact that Red Bull currently has various construction sites is also shown by a look at the later disqualified winner George Russell: “George won the race with just one stop. I don’t think we had the tire wear to even manage that,” says the world champion
Different to Hungary: Verstappen praises the strategy
Accordingly, his team, which he nevertheless attested “a good job” on Sunday in Spa, must now do their homework over the summer. On the operational side, however, Verstappen was very satisfied with the strategy in the race: “We definitely did the right thing there, being aggressive at the start to try and get in front of some, that made the race better,” praised Verstappen a week after his strategy criticism from Hungary.
Next on the agenda after the summer break is Zandvoort, which naturally gives the Dutchman additional motivation: “I shouldn’t normally have a penalty at Zandvoort either,” he alludes once again to the handicap of being relegated at Spa, “so I hope we can have a normal race weekend there.”
So that his fans, after four races in a row without a win, have something to cheer about again in time for the big home race …
