Red Bull had reasons to celebrate after this Sunday’s (19) Belgian GP of Formula 1. Max Verstappen managed to save a podium by finishing third and Isack Hadjar climbed the field to be sixth.
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The Dutchman spent the entire battle among the podium positions at Spa-Francorchamps. Despite a slight lack of luck with the timing of the virtual safety car, he at least managed to secure another top-3 in the championship. “I think we had a very good race and I hope we can have more weekends like this,” he said.
“I used a lot of energy from the hybrid system between turns 1 and 2 and, looking at the battery, I realized I would have a tough sequence ahead. Then, we had a bit of bad luck with the VSC, which affected the strategy and our ability to fight for second place at the end. The medium tire worked very well, but we struggled a bit with the hard tires in terms of grip and had some balance limitations; so, we need to analyze why it was a bit more complicated than expected,” he continued.
“However, we managed to keep the car in a good performance window; I think we can be happy with the weekend as a whole and satisfied to get on the podium. Overall, it was a good result and a pretty solid weekend,” he added.
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The Frenchman, who had to start from the back of the field after a penalty, managed to climb and crossed the finish line in sixth, saving good points for the standings. “I am very happy with how today unfolded. We had a clear plan from the moment we arrived at Spa, so we could fully focus on extracting the maximum from the race, and that’s exactly what we did,” he said.
“Going from 21st to 6th is not easy, but the strategy was perfect and the car’s pace was strong; it was a joint effort from the whole team. With the Safety Car deployment, we pitted earlier to have more options ahead, and the strategy worked perfectly. Credit to the team for that decision,” he continued.
“Making way through the other cars is always fun, especially with the pace we had, which allowed me to keep the advantage over Lando when he started to close in. The goal yesterday was to get back into the points zone. We managed to score even more points, making the afternoon very satisfying,” he concluded.
