Hannah Schmitz, Red Bull’s Principal Strategy engineer was instrumental in Max Verstappen’s win in the 2022 Hungarian GP despite starting P10.
Max Verstappen has won 28 Grand Prix across his career in F1. And some of them have been grand slam victories where he has led every lap after starting on pole. But his victory in Hungaroring in 2022 will always be a classic.
Max started the race P10 after he could not set a time in Q3 due to a technical issue. And the Hungaroring is notorious for being one of the least overtaking friendly circuits in the calendar.
Adding to that, the conditions were damp and tricky. Yet Max achieved his 8th win of the season despite even spinning off during the race. He leads the championship by 80 points heading into the summer break.
It was the Dutchman’s first win starting outside the top 6. And all thanks to the brilliant race strategy planned by Hannah Schmitz.
Hannah crafted Max’s win and was calm and communicative while the reigning world Champion was busy overtaking. And the Dutchman credited her after Red Bull claim an unassailable 96-point lead in the Constructors Championship.
“You can’t afford many mistakes,” Verstappen said. “It’s of course very hard to always be on the good side, let’s say it like that. But I think we have a lot of good guys and girls in the team. Today, I think Hannah, our strategist, was insanely calm. Yeah, she’s very good.”
Also Read: Red Bull driver avoids having fate like Charles Leclerc with last minute change before race start
Hannah Schmitz explains Max Verstappen’s strategy
Max Verstappen was already at a disadvantage after starting P10. Adding to that the damp conditions were hard to predict. This forced Red Bull to improvise its tyre strategy ahead of the race.
Hannah Schmitz says, “The original plan was to start on the hard tyres and go much longer.” But just a couple of hours before the race, the wet conditions meant Red Bull shifted to softs due to lack of grip.
She adds, “We spoke to the drivers and Christian. And we decided to go with the Soft because they were the right ones for those conditions.” This key change allowed Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez to finish P1 and P4 despite starting P10 and P11.
Hannah pointed out that the team were quite collaborative with their call. And how the drivers felt with respect to their tyre grip was key in going ahead with the strategy.
But Red Bull’s strategy was just one part of the play. Ferrari made a huge blunder that saw Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz miss out of the Podium despite starting P3 and P2.
Schmitz emphasises Ferrari as she adds, “It was an exciting race for a strategist. We got to do a lot of ‘classic strategy’ trying to make the undercuts work.”
“Because Ferrari already started with Mediums they had to go with Hards or Softs. So it was a tricky call for them. Fortunately, because we started on softs we had the two mediums for the rest of the race.”
Also Read: Lewis Hamilton left astonished by Ferrari’s strategy at Hungarian GP
