The world champion had irrepressibly risen from the sixth place on the grid, having dropped five places due to a gearbox change penalty, and by lap 17 of 44 Verstappen had passed Sergio Perez to pull out an 8.9s lead by the time the two Red Bulls made their final pitstops.
PLUS: The surprise star of Verstappen's latest Spa masterclass
After this, Verstappen unleashed an out-lap one second quicker than Perez and then proceeded to set his personal best lap of the main Spa race, a 1m48.922s, beaten only by Lewis Hamilton’s last-gasp 1m47.305s effort.
Lambiase had already warned Verstappen to deliver an “easy out-lap”, as Red Bull felt “the most important thing is to look after this soft tyre – it's a reasonable stint, 14 laps” when his driver had demanded to know the fastest time at that stage.
As Verstappen started the tour that would go on to be his personal best, Lambiase chided him for his out-lap speed, saying: “You've used a lot of the tyre on an out-lap, Max, not sure that was sensible.”
Once Verstappen’s flying effort was in, Lambiase told him “this tyre had reasonable deg in the first stint” and asked him to “use your head a bit more”, echoing a request from earlier in the race when the Dutchman was homing in on Perez and asked, cryptically, to drive to a set pace ahead of the first stops.
After being told his pace had come down to what Red Bull wanted to get to the end, but that this was still quicker than Perez’s early final stint times, Verstappen later jokingly suggested he instead could push on and stop for a third time to give his mechanics “a bit of pitstop practice”, which Lambiase swiftly rebuffed.
F1’s Pirelli tyres require careful management across race stints, but particularly during the early phase Verstappen was on with his new softs heading to the chequered flag in the Belgian Grand Prix.
Source: Autosport