“Red Bull has not been so fast this year”
Max Verstappen won the Dutch GP yesterday. Before the eyes of a frenzied orange crowd, he managed to hold off Lewis Hamilton at Circuit Zandvoort. A big party broke out after Verstappen was the first driver to drive past the checkered flag. These were the reactions to the GP of the Netherlands 2021 from the drivers who finished in the top five.
Max Verstappen
“It’s an incredible feeling to win your home race. Of course the fans expect a lot from this weekend, but it is never easy to live up to those expectations. But this weekend was great. Lewis put the pressure on it all race, so it was 72 laps of throttle to stay ahead. It wasn’t easy with traffic, because every time you drove towards a straggler you lost a lot of time. It was always exciting, but I think we controlled the race very well as a team.”
Lewis Hamilton
“Red Bull hasn’t been that fast this year, but I gave it everything. Because we were a little slower today, everything had to go well for us today. Think of the traffic, the pit stops and the strategy, but that was simply not the case. But even if those things had all gone perfectly, it would have been hard to pass them on the track.”
Valtteri Bottas
“I was stuck on a one-stop strategy pretty quickly, so I had to pay more attention to my tires than Max and Lewis. I think a one-stop was a lot worse than a two-stop this weekend. In the end, for safety’s sake, I stopped at the last, so it became a kind of mix of strategies, which wasn’t ideal.’
Pierre Gasly
‘I am very happy with this. P4 is a very good thing for me and for us as a team. Max and the Mercedes were quickly out of sight, but Leclerc was behind me the whole race and he put a lot of pressure. The car was very good and it’s great to drive on a track like that.”
Charles Leclerc
“It was a good race for us. We had a lot of speed, but it was just really hard to get within two seconds of Pierre. We had the fastest car in the middle, but we just needed a better qualifying.’
