And so Max Verstappen is at the top of the World Cup standings after six races. “After his second retirement, you all said it was over for us”, Red Bull chief executive Helmut Marko smiled afterwards in the paddock in Barcelona. “But I said back then that we still had plenty of races to go and we would hit back.”
Marko stated that it was logical that Verstappen was allowed to pass his teammate Sergio Perez twice, because he was a lot faster at that time. ,,Sergio didn’t understand why at the time, but we opted for two different strategies. And Max was much faster at that time. It was the best and safest option for us to get that one-two in.”
The Austrian stated that it was somewhat difficult to keep Verstappen calm in the first part of the race, when his DRS system was not working. ,,It didn’t make sense for us to explain where the problem came from, because he had to focus on the race. It was the same problem as Saturday. There was nothing he could do about that.”