Max Verstappen has expressed his desire to scrutinize why he did not capitalize on an ostensibly “cheap” pit stop that would have kept him in the lead during Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Verstappen had taken the lead in the early stages of the race but had to pit when Nyck de Vries’ AlphaTauri car crashed, prompting the yellow flags to be waved. This was followed by a full Safety Car, which led to Verstappen losing the lead.
Meanwhile, his teammate Sergio Perez made a pit stop under the Safety Car conditions and lost less time than Verstappen, enabling him to take the lead. Additionally, Charles Leclerc moved ahead of Verstappen after the Dutchman’s pit stop. Verstappen did manage to regain his position ahead of the Ferrari driver, but Perez kept him at bay for the rest of the race, resulting in Verstappen finishing in second place.
While Verstappen conceded that he and his team may have been unlucky with the timing of the Safety Car, he intends to assess whether Red Bull had access to additional information that could have prompted him to make a cheaper pit stop.
“I saw that there was a car stopped, I thought he maybe just locked up. In hindsight, I mean, I can’t see that, but yeah, it’s something to review,” Verstappen told reporters in Baku.
Verstappen noted that while he saw the car stopping, he could not observe every detail, such as whether all the wheels were attached to the car properly, and that the team may have had a better overview. He also acknowledged that he was unsure about the exact timing of the call to pit.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated that the team made the “optimum” decision for Verstappen at the time, but circumstances ultimately favoured Perez on this occasion.
“It was the optimum time to stop from a performance point of view,” Horner told Sky Sports F1. “De Vries hasn’t hit the wall, the engine was still running, and to us, it looked like he was going to reverse out and go from there.”
Horner added that while it was possible to say in retrospect that things could have been done differently, sometimes circumstances do not go one’s way. He concluded that “his misfortune was Checo’s good fortune.”
