“At the moment, yeah, they look unbeatable,” Max Verstappen thinks it might be ‘difficult’ to beat Mercedes in the race
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Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen was the only driver of the frontrunners to start on medium tyres, but it seemed to be an okay decision, as he overtook Kevin Magnussen at the start of lap 3, and was able to keep George Russell behind. But in a few laps, the Briton came back at him – overtaking him on lap 15. Following this, the Dutchman was overtaken by Carlos Sainz (lap 18) and Lewis Hamilton (lap 20) as well.
Due to Sainz’s 5-place grid penalty for taking new components, Verstappen will start the race P3. Many thought that the worsened performance was due to the tyre choices, or him running over debris (like in Silverstone) and then damaging his front wing, but Verstappen thinks that he has too much degradation, so in that sense, it’s more like Austria.
Verstappen is unsure if he can ‘do a lot’ on Sunday. Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Verstappen thinks he may have been slow even on soft tyres: “At the start it felt all right but somehow it didn’t work – but I think even on softs I would have been too slow. So we are clearly just having way too much degradation here. We’ll analyse it – I’m not sure we can do a lot for tomorrow, but it can’t be worse than today’s.”
In his post-race interview, when asked if he thinks it may be difficult to beat Mercedes, Verstappen said: “At the moment, yeah, they look unbeatable, but we’ll analyze how we did.” Red Bull will need to try and address the degradation problem cited by Verstappen, but even if they do, the Silver Arrows might just be quicker.
Christian Horner: Mercedes had a very quick car [in the sprint]
Christian Horner explained Red Bull’s decision to start on the mediums: “We thought that the softs were limited in range. We took the decision to start on the mediums. If they could survive the first 12 laps, the second half of the race would become a bit more comfortable. Having survived the first half of the race, we actually ended up on a worse degradation than the softs.”
Of course, this decision did not help them at all, but even if they had started on the softs, he argued that Mercedes may have been too fast for them: “Mercedes had a very quick car today and we couldn’t hold them off. They’ve been heavily developing this car through the season and they’ve been getting closer, so it’s no real surprise that they’ve had this kind of performance and George has done a good job there.”
It’s still very possible that Max Verstappen and Red Bull can triumph here, but for that, the Dutchman thinks they’ll have to address the degradation problem first, and then normally, ‘the tyre should work’. This is also Mercedes’ first front-row lockout of the season, and they’ll be looking for their first race win of the season tomorrow.
Also Read: “That cost me pole today,” Max Verstappen blames Turn 8 lock-up for ending up in P2 for Sprint Race
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