LAGOS, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- Max Verstappenhe reportedly asserts that the wall-hitting incident in the rain at Portier gave him the boost he needed to win the Monaco Grand Prix.
The Dutch driver extended his championship lead to 39 points over teammate Sergio Perez, who finished 16th, by picking up his fourth victory of F1 2023 and a record 39th for Red Bull.
Verstappen’s victory was hampered by the arrival of heavy rain with 25 laps left in the race.
The Dutchman found himself touching the barriers as he cautiously maneuvered around Portier’s right-hand turns before being allowed to pit for intermediate tyres.
Meanwhile, Verstappen said the wall had helped prevent him from spinning out from the lead.
“I locked the rears and I couldn’t get out of it, so it’s just trying to control it with a bit of drifting,” Verstappen said.
“Luckily the wall in a way stopped it from sliding even more.”
Verstappen eventually beat Fernando Alonso by almost 28 seconds, and this triumph was made possible by the Aston Martin driver’s pit stop for dry tires just one lap before the rainstorm hit Monte Carlo and forced Alonso to make an instant second stop.
However, the two-time world champion acknowledged it had been a “hectic” race. On paper, the outcome appears to be another lopsided victory for Verstappen and Red Bull.
“First of all because of the chance of rain we couldn’t do the strategy we wanted to do, we had to stay out almost double the amount of laps we’d have liked on the medium,” Verstappen told Sky Sports F1.
“That was a big challenge because I had to go through that graining phase and then the tyres started to pick up again.
“That’s what I really needed as we planned for like 30 laps and I did 55. It was not the easiest and also balance from left to right was very different.
“Then it started to rain and on very worn tyres it was very difficult, I clipped a few barriers – I just had no grip. Even on the intermediates it was super slippery and it took a few laps to feel comfortable.”
Given that the RB19’s capabilities couldn’t be fully utilized due to the track’s unusual design, Monaco was anticipated to be Red Bull’s biggest test so far this season.
Verstappen managed to steal pole position on Saturday with a miraculous last sector, and his victory keeps Red Bull’s 2023 winning streak at 100 percent.
Christian Horner, the CEO of Red Bull, however, claimed that they had felt “on the ropes” over the weekend.
According to Horner, Sky Sports F1, “I started feeling uneasy around the time the red light turned on. You may say, “Okay, there’s rain around, if they can go far enough, if the mediums degrade…” when they peel the covers off and you find quite a few have gone on the hard tyre.
“The first thing was convert the start and Max did that and then it was about building a bit of a gap and getting a Safety Car window to the cars behind and then just try and hang it out and see what the weather does.
“We were on the ropes here. We knew coming into this weekend it was going to be our biggest challenge in the first half of the year here and the low-speed nature, playing to the strengths – we thought Ferrari would be the main opponent but Fernando has just been on fire all weekend, unbelievable.”
Horner added: “All the races have the same points but this one means that little bit more. It’s always so special to win here, everything is a bit unique here and the grid was completely nuts before the race. Big win, every driver wants this race on their CV.”
Also, he admitted Aston Martin’s decision to put another set of dry tyres on Alonso’s car had relieved the pressure on Red Bull having felt they had left it a lap too long to stop Verstappen from the lead.
“It’s about the engineer working with the driver and trying to find the crossover. It felt as though we’d gone a lap too long before going onto the inter and had Fernando picked the inter it would have been much tighter and put more pressure on our pit stop,” Horner said.
“Thankfully he took the slick tyre just as the rain was growing and at that point it was important Max didn’t take any risks and got it to the pits.
“When you’re the lead car you can only lose, you have nothing to gain. You’ve just got to try and work with the conditions – we have spotters out there, you’re trying to look at the radar, looking at the crowd – and just trying to piece it together. The driver has the best knowledge of what’s going on on the circuit.”
Additionally, Horner urged Perez to make an effort to recover after a trying weekend in which his prospects of winning were terminated by his collision in qualifying on Saturday.
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The team is performing at such a fantastic level, he remarked. The squad is extremely motivated.
Checo had a difficult weekend that he would like to forget, but the good news is that he can rapidly recover the next weekend in Barcelona.
“We’re six races in and there’s so much racing to go, 16 to go. There’s a long, long way and a lot of racing to do so we’re just taking it one race at a time and trying to get the best out of every weekend.”