“I tried everything I could” – Max Verstappen had nowhere to go as Lewis Hamilton charged him down and comfortably won the Spanish Grand Prix for Mercedes.
The glimmer of hope that this season is going to be a tight fight between Mercedes and Red Bull is steadily dying down.
Despite Max Verstappen overtaking Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap, the Red Bull was no match to Mercedes’ undercut pit stop strategy. Eventually, the latter hunted the Red Bull down and won the Spanish GP comfortably, compelling Verstappen to admit he was a “sitting duck” to the extreme pace and grip of Mercedes.
“In a way I could see it coming already. At the end [on] the softs, he was faster and when we put on the mediums he was clearly had a lot more pace, he could just stay within one second so there was not much we could’ve done.”
“They went for another stop and then I knew it was over because I was already struggling with the tyres and you could see that every lap he was getting closer and closer so. [I was] a bit of a sitting duck.”
“When you’re in the lead, with the cars behind, with traffic and so on you don’t want to pit in traffic but of course it makes it a lot easier when you have a pace advantage. They clearly have more pace in the cars. So for us, even if we had jumped for another stop, I’m not sure if we would have caught up again but nevertheless, I tried everything I could.”
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