With an ultra-long stint on hard tires, Max Verstappen laid the foundation for his superior victory at the Miami Grand Prix. The world champion had previously hatched the plan to start hard together with his engineer and only then presented it to the Red Bull Formula 1 strategists.
“That was something I was already thinking about (on Saturday; editor’s note) with my engineer,” Verstappen reveals about his conversation with Gianpiero Lambiase. “We already had a pretty strong opinion about it.”
“Then of course you have to discuss that with the team and the strategists, and they gave her the okay. In terms of race time, it was very close anyway between the medium/hard and hard/medium variants, so it didn’t really matter.”
“But of course, if you start on the hard tyre, the risk is of course a little higher, because we only had one tire from it, and if you have a puncture on the first lap, then the race is of course a little harder,” explains Verstappen.
“But I was happy to take that risk and do it differently from the rest. Of course you always have to take care of your tyres, even the medium tyres. But I felt like that (with the hard tyres) initially had a better chance of getting through the field.”
“I think I was already on the podium by lap 14. From then on it was all about driving in clean air and, as I said, looking after the tyres.”
Perez: “It’s more of a gamble from pole with hard tires”
While Verstappen opted to start on hard tires early on, team-mate Perez admitted he never considered it as it would have been too much of a risk for him: “If you start from pole, it’s with hard tires Tires are more of a gamble that can end well or badly.”
“I think at that point none of us were expecting the start on medium tires to not work well because pretty much the whole field went for it. I don’t think any of us realized how weak the tire was.”
“I think it wasn’t until we did a few laps that we realized it was a pretty bad tyre,” said Perez. When asked if he thinks he could have won if he had started on hard tyres, he says: “It’s difficult to answer because you don’t know what the tires would have done.”
“Certainly my mileage would have looked a little better simply because I would have spent less time on the medium compound which as I said was very weak.”