Max Verstappen held on to his seventh victory of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix, after a close challenge from Lando Norris.
It was the clearest indication that Red Bull’s advantage was no longer as great as it once was, as Norris finished just 2.2 seconds at the chequered flag. The Briton was left rueing a costly mistake at the start, which left him behind Verstappen and George Russell during the critical opening stages of the race.
The time lost behind other cars meant Norris had a sizable gap at the end to cover, while Verstappen could control the pace without needing to take too much out of his tyres.
Former F1 driver Pedro de la Rosa believes an important attribute enabled Verstappen to have the edge over Norris when speaking on the F1 Nation podcast.
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Pedro de la Rosa highlights Max Verstappen’s ‘extremely high level’
Verstappen’s success in the last two races has hinged on the execution of big moments in races. In Canada, he made the right call during a Safety Car while in Spain it was all about making sure he overtook Russell in the first couple of laps.
De La Rosa thinks this ‘extremely high level’ is separating the three-time world champion from the rest of the field.
“We’re seeing the best of Max Verstappen this season in terms of matureness. He knows when he can win. He knows how and when he has to settle for a non-win. When his race engineer said, we believe this is the best possibility we have to overtake George. And immediately a few seconds later, he’s just overtaking him. He knows when he has to manage the tyres and when he must not manage the tyres.
“This is a part of this process of building up a world champion, and he’s now at an extremely high level. I’m pretty sure that today Max is more proud of what he’s done than when he’s had these wins with over half a minute because he realises that he has made a difference.”
Max Verstappen is making the difference
It should come as no surprise that Verstappen and Red Bull are more savvy when it comes to seizing opportunities in a race.
His engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, radioed in after the first couple of laps behind Russell to say: “This might be our best opportunity now, Max. Think wisely.” He was effectively telling Verstappen that he had the best of his tyres to use with DRS to get past Russell, at a circuit notorious for being difficult to overtake on.
The case in point was Norris, who failed to get past Russell and lost critical time to Verstappen who could manage his pace while Russell created the bottleneck.
Last year, Verstappen won the Spanish GP by 23 seconds, but that has been slashed considerably since McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes have brought significant upgrade packages to their car.
The team knows this, which is why it is preparing an unprecedented major update before the Hungarian Grand Prix to help restore its margins.
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