All so familiar so far at Spa. Rain, risk, and Red Bull running away with a 2023 Formula 1 race.
That's how this season’s second sprint race ended, with Max Verstappen in complete control up front, despite the proceeding’s early intrigue of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri leading the initial laps.
Verstappen and his Red Bull team ultimately made the correct choice in not stopping at the end of the five formation laps on the still-wet track as Piastri and co did.
If the Dutchman had come in and been forced to wait in his pitbox at the start of the pitlane, he would’ve lost more time than the 1.5-second deficit he faced to Piastri when he did get back out on the inters at the start of sprint’s second tour. Chances are, though, he still would’ve raced back to win given his crushing form.
“I said already to the team [ahead of the sprint finally starting], ‘I know we can pit straight away [but] it’s very risky in case of having all the cars come in as well’,” Verstappen said in the press conference afterwards.
“You’d have to hold your car. We just took the safer option to at least do one lap. Maybe there would be a safety car [on lap one] and you’re lucky. There wasn’t a safety car, so I knew I would lose out – because the extreme tyres are a lot slower around here than an inter.”
Piastri noted that “we had the same risk as Max of potentially getting stuck with everyone coming in, but it worked out really well”. Indeed, he led his first F1 race, albeit not a full grand prix affair. Not that that dims any assessment of Piastri either on this day or most others in his impressive rookie campaign.
Source: Autosport