The championship winner took in a dominant way his sixteenth win of 2023, the fourth in a row after the Singapore GP won by Sainz and a new record for Red Bull driver. In fact, he broke the record set by himself in the past season of 15 race wins in a single year.
Taking the lead at Turn 1 from polesitter Charles Leclerc, before the red flag brought up by Magnussen’s suspension failure and crash, the Dutch driver had been on an interesting two-stop strategy, but its potential advantage or downsides weren’t seen as the race was neutralised, allowing free tyre choices under red flag conditions.
Verstappen was very pleased with his day, which came after a Saturday that had left him unsatisfied with himself, but also spared immediately after the race a thought for his teammate Sergio Perez, who crashed out at Turn 1 in his home race:
“Yeah, it’s been incredible, you know? Of course, unfortunately Checo retired on lap one but the crowd stayed and there have been amazing, so yeah, incredible!
“We are experiencing an incredible season, and again today as well. We had to start P3, but I think the pace of the car was very, very good. We tried to do a different strategy to everyone else and unfortunately with the red flag we couldn’t really show it, but nevertheless on those tyres, at the end, I think we were very strong.”
The key move that secured his win was probably his very strong start, which, paired with his teammate’s attempt to do a double pass for the lead, allowed him to immediately bolt away and develop a 2s gap on Leclerc, at the time in P2:
“That start definitely made it a bit easier for me in the first stint as well. Also, I was going to do a two-stop, so that, of course, gave me those extra couple seconds that would look great on the plot anyway, if we would have made it happen.
Photo credit: Oracle Red Bull Racing
“Just the tyres around here, it’s always very hard to manage, but I think we had quite decent pace in them. And then we opted to box a bit earlier. Also on the hard tyre, we were quite competitive and I closed a lot of that pit stop back down.”
His very bold strategical choice was made possible by the tyre advantage that he had, as the only driver starting from the top spots with two fresh sets of hard tyres:
“I think it would have been quite interesting to the end, you know, to see how much faster I could have gone [on] a new set of hard tyres, the strategy was looking great. But then of course, we had the red flag, so basically everything that we did, we could throw in the bin and start over.”
However, it didn’t make a difference, due to the interruption of the race:
“It was all about having a good start and trying to keep the lead into Turn 1, which we did. After that it was just pace management to the end to keep the tyres alive, looking after the car, the brakes, you know, everything.”
Asked if he had worried about either of the two starts, and especially the second one as he could have lost his lead, the three times World Champion denied, adding that he felt confident in the driving abilities of his colleagues:
“No, not nervous at all. It’s not the first time that I’ve been two-wide or three-wide into Turn 1 here. But also, I mean, we all trust each other.
“Of course, we are all on the limit, braking into the corner, but it was all fine. Then yeah, of course, I saw on my outside that something happened. But luckily, on the inside, we could stay out of trouble.”
The restart had raised some concerns for other drivers, with the majority of them on hard tyres and the decision of having a standing start. Verstappen hadn’t been bothered by the decision, and ultimately everything went alright with no crashes:
“For me, it was quite clear that we had to do the last stint on that hard tyre. Luckily, it had only done one lap, so that helped. But of course in the start, normally, the hard tyres is a bit more difficult to get off the line, but we actually had quite a decent start on that tyre as well.”
