Ayrton Senna drove one of his best weekends in Formula 1 at the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix – until he crashed a few laps before the end of the race. 35 years later, Max Verstappen put on a similarly impressive performance in Monte Carlo.
The difference: Verstappen brought the car home that year and won the Grand Prix by almost 28 seconds over Fernando Alonso. The world champion reveals that he did one very important thing differently than Senna did back then.
Because although he was around 20 seconds ahead of Alonso after his pit stop, he didn’t switch to management mode – but actually extended his lead on the wet track. “Towards the end it was pretty hectic,” reports the Dutchman.
“I had [nach dem Wechsel auf Intermediates] had a big lead and didn’t want to risk going the same pace or faster and then ending up in the wall. You have to be a little more careful,” he explains.
“You can’t risk too much, but of course you can’t drive too slowly at the same time,” emphasizes Verstappen. Because that was exactly what Senna did 35 years earlier. The Brazilian was even around 50 seconds ahead of his team-mate Alain Prost.
Verstappen had to find a middle ground
He only made the mistake after he was instructed by the pit wall to slow down. As a result, Senna lost his rhythm and had an accident in the porter curve. Verstappen did not want to take this risk last Sunday.
“You don’t want to risk too much, but you also don’t want to drive too slow because then you don’t have temperature in the tires. So it was a bit difficult to find a middle ground. But after a few laps I settled in and felt quite comfortable “, he reports.
“I think I had Lando at one point too [Norris] in my gearbox, so at some point I thought I had to go a little faster. It’s not a comfortable situation here [in Monaco] driving in the wet,” reports the world champion.
“But fortunately, after five laps, I also changed a few things on the steering wheel to find a better balance, and that definitely helped,” he explains, emphasizing that “even on the intermediates” in the second sector it’s still “a lot had been “slippery”.
So why didn’t he slow down? “My engineer asked me the same thing. But when you have a rhythm, it’s better to stick to it,” he says. “In addition, the tires then cool down,” he mentions another factor.
Verstappen emphasizes: Was not over the limit
“You don’t want that because they were already pretty cold,” said the Dutchman, who clarified: “I have [das Auto] not run over or anything.” He wasn’t over the limit, he just went at the rhythm that suited him.
Only immediately after his pit stop on lap 55 of 78 did Verstappen drive a little slower than Alonso because he had almost crashed on slicks before. “With really worn tires it wasn’t really comfortable [durch den Regen] drive through,” he says.
“I touched a few walls, especially on my in-lap. It was very, very difficult,” said Verstappen. But after getting used to the wet track, he extended his lead at the front again until the end of the race.
Incidentally, Verstappen’s last failure was more than a year ago. Most recently, he did not see the checkered flag at the Australian Grand Prix in April 2022, which was due to a technical defect and not a driving error.
His last failure due to an accident comes from the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, when he collided with Lewis Hamilton. That was more than 20 months ago now.