Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has admitted to feeling ‘supper happy’ with his dominant victory at the 2021 Styrian Grand Prix.
Having topped Friday Practice and taken pole on Saturday, Verstappen dominated the Styrian GP from lights out unchallenged to move 18 points clear of title rival, Lewis Hamilton as he won by 35.743 seconds and lapped everyone but Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez.
The 23 year-old admitted post-race that his drive was “really enjoyable” with the car “working well” as he just focused solely on his race in terms of “hitting the apexes in the places I wanted to, looking after the tyres and it worked out well.”
On winning by over 35s, Verstappen expressed his surprise at the margin because he “really wasn’t expecting” such a wide difference after looking close on long-run pace all weekend, yet is aware that next week could bring totally different result with rain again forecast after failing to materialise this weekend.
Verstappen also noted that the entire grid will of learned valuable data from this weekend to take into the Austrian GP next weekend at the same circuit, with expectation that Red Bull too “will of course try and do even better and keep improving ourselves so we can stay ahead.”
Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Perez meanwhile missed out on making it a double podium at Red Bull’s home race after his two-stop strategy proved unsuccessful by just 0.527s despite catching Bottas in the final laps.
The Mexican bemused a slow first pit stop due to an issue with his left-rear tyre as the difference which enabled Bottas to overcut him, which led to the two-stopper with Perez ultimately blaming “traffic” for him eventually missing out on third.
Team Principal, Christian Horner praised both Verstappen and Perez for different but excellent drives as the team won four races on the bounce for the first time since 2013.
On Verstappen’s dominance, Horner described the Dutchman’s drive as “clinical” and the team’s “strongest race of the season”, with a nice gap pulled on Hamilton throughout the race in incredibly controlled fashion.
Horner meanwhile confessed to feeling that Perez was unlucky to miss out on a podium, saying: “It was a real shame for Checo as he deserved a podium today but losing a small amount of time in the pit stop unfortunately put him out just behind Bottas.”
Horner meanwhile added that he thought that Perez would of gotten third if the race had been one lap longer than the 71 lap race distance.
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