Verstappen Has No Regrets after Late Pit Stop Costs Him F1 British Grand Prix Win
Max Verstappen had every reason to be angry, or at the very least disappointed, in his Red Bull team's decision to pit for fresh tires with two laps remaining in the Formula 1 British Grand Prix on Sunday.
In the end, however, there were no regrets—at least not from Verstappen.
Verstappen nearly snatched victory away from Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes at Silverstone. It was a race that Verstappen conceded early that he couldn't win, and yet he nearly scored one of the more improbable wins in Formula 1 history.
Trailing by some 15 seconds most of the race, Verstappen was hitting all his marks on the way to a third-place finish at Silverstone. The gap between Verstappen and the cars ahead of him, Merecedes' Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, was seemingly insurmountable, as was the gap to the pack behind.
"I told my engineer to drink, stay hydrated, it’s very important around here," Verstappen said when asked about how he was able to stay focused with so little traffic to contend with. "It was pretty lonely, I was just trying to manage my pace and trying to look after the tires."
Then it got fun.
Verstappen saw second-place driver Valtteri Bottas dive into the pits after suffering a tire failure that ultimately knocked the Mercedes driver not only off the podium but all the way back to an 11th-place finish and out of the points completely. Fearing a similar fate, Red Bull called for a pit stop for fresh rubber with just two laps to go. It was call designed to not only lock in second place but also give Verstappen a shot at fastest lap of the race and the bonus point that goes with it.
When Hamilton's own left front shredded on the final lap, however, Verstappen proved to be too far back to make up the difference and steal the win, despite recording the fastest lap of the race on the final lap. Verstappen came out of the pits just over 30 seconds back of Hamilton, and he closed the gap to 5.8 seconds at the end. Without the pit stop, Verstappen could have easily won that race.
"Yeah, but I could also pick up a puncture, you know, and I could lose a lot more," Verstappen said. "That’s the thing, it’s always so easy to say afterwards that we should have just continued, but who would have said that Lewis would have got a puncture? How often does this happen? Normally, never.
"So, I don’t regret anything. I think we made the right decision. Easy to comment afterwards. You don’t know at the time, and we felt that was the right decision, and I still think it is the right decision. It is what it is. Normally, you don’t really get punctures. Yeah. They are also the deserved winners. It’s not like I’m sitting here upset or disappointed. I’m actually very happy to be second. Normally it would have been third."
Hamilton left the first of two races at Silverstone with a commanding lead in the F1 Drivers' Championship. With 88 points, the six-time champion is 30 points clear of runner-up and teammate Bottas. Verstappen is 36 points off the pace. Maximum points possible for one race is 26 points.
"Well, it’s away easy to say afterwards but I think we were also lucky today that Valtteri had a puncture, so we gained a position, so I’m actually not disappointed at all, or anything," Verstappen said. "Once Valtteri had that puncture, OK, it’s an easy P2. So we just pitted for new tires to make sure because I was also not sure what was going on with my tires because normally, when you see other cars having punctures and you have pitted on the same lap you are like, well, might happen to you as well.
"So, you don’t want to have that problem, so we pitted just to be sure. We go out, of course with the Soft tires and then Lewis has his puncture but also that’s unlucky. It could have been lucky for me but unlucky for Lewis, so at the end it is what it is and I’m very happy with second."
