Verstappen, on his duel with Hamilton: “I tried everything I could!”

Here is the star of this 2019 Monaco edition alongside Charles Leclerc: the Red Bull driver #33 came close to winning his first Monaco Grand Prix! Starting third, Max Verstappen maximized every opportunity to climb up the rankings, until he received a penalty on the 9th lap during his pit stop. A deserved “unsafe release” for squeezing Bottas who was alongside him.

On the unsafe release: his team is not at fault!

“The team did nothing wrong,” the Dutchman declared afterward to the journalists. “We just lacked luck: I didn’t see there was a car next to me. I still knew it was going to be tight coming out: we touched but I was in front of him!”

In the haste of the maneuver, Verstappen also forgot to switch back to the correct engine mapping! This changed the acceleration percentage: I had nothing at first and then suddenly the power came in! Sometimes I felt like I was driving on ice, the driver admitted regretfully. A very annoying problem, especially since he could only change this mapping by stopping again!

A few laps later, the Red Bull leader logically received a 5-second penalty for his unsafe release, applicable on his next stop or on his final classification if he didn’t return to the pits. After switching from soft tires to hard tires, Verstappen decided to go to the end, confident in his provisional 2nd place. This choice was obviously the right one, with Lewis Hamilton struggling in front of him on medium tires. “As soon as I knew I had this penalty, I pushed hard to overtake Lewis. He was driving so slowly!” notes Verstappen.

« Lewis had the wrong tires. Otherwise, he would have gone faster! »

On his 76th lap attack: a fair maneuver

Closing the gap to under a second with twenty laps to go, the duel between the two men truly intensified in the last ten laps: Verstappen moved off the racing line… in the Loews hairpin and especially during the braking at the chicane out of the Tunnel. His most earnest attempt came on the 76th lap: by diving inside, Verstappen tried to squeeze through a tiny gap, forcing Hamilton to cut the chicane.

« At one point, I still told myself: “Let’s go, let’s try and see what happens.” There was a little contact.

There is nothing more I could do. I just held my line going as far as possible and he moved in the middle. I had an opportunity but it’s always difficult to overtake here. I tried everything I could.

« Normally, one does not look in the mirrors while braking. But hey, there’s no one to blame in the maneuver, especially since there was no damage. »

The hunter and the hunted 🎯#F1 #MonacoGP 🇲🇨 @LewisHamilton @Max33Verstappen pic.twitter.com/ksLaUf7hL0

— Formula 1 (@F1) 27 mai 2019

On its Honda engine: performance maximized there too!

In the end, the Dutch driver only finishes in fourth place, not having been able to create a sufficient gap over Vettel and Bottas, who were less than five seconds behind him at the finish. A shame for him, because if he had managed to overtake Hamilton, there is no doubt he would have created a sufficient gap to relegate the Briton to five seconds… and win!

But isn’t Verstappen still a bit disappointed with the performance of his Honda engine? Very close in the slow corners, his lower straight-line speed did not allow him to make a difference. “We used the maximum performance! We don’t have a ‘party mode’ like Mercedes or Ferrari,” Verstappen points out in conclusion, without blaming Honda.

Too bad for the spearhead from Milton Keynes! His next race in Canada will certainly be more complicated, on a circuit favoring the engine, and therefore Ferrari. With Vettel’s second place finish this Sunday, Max Verstappen loses the third place in the overall driver standings. But he’s only four points behind!

Lap 77 of 78

One of those ‘hold your breath’ moments 👀😮🙈#F1 #MonacoGP 🇲🇨 pic.twitter.com/WbLXlcCd0B

— Formula 1 (@F1) May 26, 2019