Ever since the start of the ground-effect era, Max Verstappen has enjoyed unprecedented dominance in F1. While he continues to lead the rest of the pack with a comfortable points margin, that dominance has significantly faded away in 2024. Things, however, were not as bad right from the start of the year.
Until the Chinese GP, the fifth round of the season, the Dutchman bagged four wins. Perhaps expecting to continue the run for long, he made a boastful comment in one of Team Redline’s live streams on Twitch. “Haven’t heard that one in a while,” he quipped as the British national anthem started playing.
Since then, the Dutchman has lost four out of the next seven races. On three of those occasions, he lost out to Britons – Lando Norris in Miami, George Russell in Austria, and most recently Lewis Hamilton in the UK itself. The non-English driver to beat him, meanwhile, was Charles Leclerc who won his first home race in Monaco.
“havent heard that one in a while” as response to the british anthem lord pic.twitter.com/8EFbgvtXgv
— nini (@SCUDERIAFEMBOY) April 17, 2024
The Mercedes drivers have recently found their mojo, racking up two wins in as many races. Norris, however, in his McLaren and the Ferrari drivers, ever since the start of the season, have kept Verstappen on his toes.
Talking of Norris in particular, the Briton has come mighty close to snatching the win from the reigning champion on three occasions. After narrowly missing out on the win in Imola, Montreal, and Barcelona, he got too much for Verstappen to handle. Resultantly, the duo crashed in Austria and ruined the chances for a win for both.
The British GP was another humbling experience for Verstappen. Had it not been for some brilliant strategic calls, he may not have made much progress from his starting position of P4.
Verstappen reveals what helped him bag the podium at Silverstone
After a series of testing races, Verstappen and Red Bull expected to see better days during the triple header. That was because of the long straights and the wide track on these circuits, which were expected to suit their car.
They have, however, managed to bag just one win from the three fixtures. Reflecting on his struggles and the comeback, particularly at the British GP, he said,
“We just didn’t have the pace today. I was slowly dropping back when it mattered in the beginning, so it didn’t look great at some point. I was thinking ‘Are we going to finish fifth, sixth?’ But we made the right calls, going from the slicks to the inters and also from the inters back to the slicks. It was every time the right lap”.
Verstappen then further lauded the strategists’ call to pick the hard compound tires for his final stint. That, he believes, played a crucial role in landing him the P2 position. Otherwise, the result could have been a lot worse.
