Verstappen 'forced to push flat out' to beat Norris
In recent times, Max Verstappen has taken win after win looking like he was having a quiet drive in the countryside. But that certainly wasn't the case in Imola in a hotly contested Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Verstappen started the race from pole position and easily defended from Lando Norris into the first corner at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, swiftly move out of DRS activation range to prevent a counter-attack.
He then led through to the first round of pity stops, and resumed with almost six seconds in hand while Norris appeared to be under heavy pressure from Ferrari's Charles Leclerc to hold on to P2.
But it wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have appeared, and Verstappen was already feeling the pressure. "The whole race, I had to push flat out," he told the media in parc ferme after the race.
"On the medium tyres we were quite strong," he explained, referring to the opening stint of the race. "On the hard tyres [it] was a bit more difficult to manage, especially the last ten, 15 laps. I had no grip anymore.
"I was really sliding a lot. I saw Lando closing in so the last ten laps I was just flat out, but it's very difficult when the tyres aren't working anymore," he pointed out.
"I couldn't afford to make too many mistakes. Luckily we didn't," he said after crossing the line just seven tenths ahead of the charging McLaren.
Red Bull had also looked to be struggling for pace in Friday practice, and Verstappen confirmed that they had needed to do a lot of work to get the normally formidable Red Bull into decent form. "We changed a lot on the car.
"Of course, we didn't have a lot of information going into the race," he added. "Maybe that's why on the hard tyres it was a bit more difficult for us. But I think from where we started the weekend to now we can be incredibly pleased with the pole and the wins. I'll take that!
Talking to Sky Sports F1, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner elaborated on the problems that had faced Verstappen this weekend.
"It was a race of two-halves for us," he said. "The first half of the race was very strong. We built up to a seven-and-a-half, eight second lead, but then in the second-half Lando started to catch us very quickly.
"We'd built up a big lead on the medium, and then halfway through the hard stint we started to lose the temperature in the tyre, which is a very hard compound," he explained.
"McLaren just worked it a bit harder, and they saw the benefit from that in the second half of the race," he acknowledged. "Max was under massive pressure as he had three strikes for track limits and couldn't afford to put a millimetre wrong with all that pressure.
"It was a great, great job by Max withstanding the pressure as Lando was coming hard at the end."
As for the way the team had recovered from its Friday problems, Horner gave credit to the 'back room boys' back at Red Bull's base in Milton Keynes.
"We came here a bit on the back foot on Friday," Horner conceded. "The team worked really long hours and [reserve driver] Sebastien Buemi did a great job in the simulator into the early hours of Saturday morning.
"We made a step forward in FP3, and Max got that incredible pole and then we obviously managed to convert it [in the race]. But Max had to be at the very top of his game: it was a very, very hard victory."
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