Max Verstappen got away with being ‘super aggressive’ towards the end of the season: Former F1 driver
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Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen claimed his first ever F1 title last Sunday, as he passed Lewis Hamilton on the final lap of the Abu Dhabi GP. Red Bull needed nothing short of a miracle to snatch the victory away from Lewis Hamilton. Red Bull’s prayers were answered with just 5 laps to go, as a safety car was deployed due to a racing incident.
Despite winning the championship, former F1 driver, Juan Montoya was not too impressed with how Max Verstappen drove during the second half of the season. Montoya believes that Max was super aggressive, and he got away on several occasions.
Montoya stated that Max’s aggressive driving had carried on for a bit too long, and in any other scenario, he could have been handed harsher penalties.
“The problem is they’ve been carrying on racing for too many races here. I think Max was super aggressive at the end of the year and, in my opinion, maybe a little too aggressive. And he got away with it,” said Montoya.
“When you start getting away with it, you start questioning when you get a penalty for something like, ‘Why am I getting penalised for this if what I did before was OK?’ I think the stewards put themselves in that position by not being more aggressive with him earlier in the year. But it’s a 50/50,” he added, as quoted by RacingNews365.
Montoya believes Mercedes were way ‘too conservative’
Montoya went ahead and questioned Mercedes’ strategy with Lewis Hamilton. He believes that Mercedes could have just followed Max Verstappen and brought Lewis Hamilton into the pits when the safety car was deployed.
Mercedes decided to prefer track position over fresher tyres, as the German giants had two chances to pit Lewis Hamilton. In the final lap of the race, Lewis Hamilton’s hard tyres which lasted over 40 laps had worn out, and were unable to defend against Verstappen’s fresher set of soft tyres.
“I think Lewis was way, way too conservative there at the end. He knew he had to finish the race and, if they crashed, Max would get the championship. At the end of the race, Mercedes were so afraid of getting involved with Red Bull they made some strategy errors there,” Montoya added.
“It’s very easy to judge from the outside but, when you had the Virtual Safety Car and Max pitted the first lap, they could have come in the next lap because they were still under VSC. If they would have done that, they would have been on better tyres at the end as well,” he continued.
Also Read: New FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem: Time will cool tensions for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes
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Nirmit Mehta
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