Max Verstappen thanked his Red Bull team for putting together a race-winning strategy that allowed him to recover from a poor grid spot and take victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix despite a mid-race spin.
“It was a crazy race and of course very happy that we won it," Verstappen told the media in parc ferme after the finish. "I was battling a lot of guys so it was a lot of fun out there."
Verstappen had suffered power issues at the end of yesterday's qualifying which left him P10 on the grid and led to the team replacing his power unit overnight to avoid further problems.
He and his team mate Sergio Perez both started on soft tyres and had immediate success passing medium-shod cars like the Alpines of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon ahead of them.
Verstappen was subsequently able to undercut George Russell on pit lane and then went head-to-head with Charles Leclerc.
Having succeeded in passing the Ferrari once, he then suffered a full 360-degree spin and had to do it all over again.
“I was struggling a bit with the shifts and the clutch," he explained later. "We had to change a few things around that to not basically burn the clutch and that cost a bit of performance.
"I think that caught me out out of that corner,” he suggested. “But luckily I could do a 360, so I lost one spot.”
But in the end his domination of the race proved total. After the final pit stops played out he took the win by almost ten seconds over Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, a result that took even Verstappen by surprise.
“I was of course hoping that I could get close to a podium, but [it was] very tricky conditions out there," he said.
“I think we had a really good strategy. We were really reactive and always pitting at the right time. I think we had some good out laps, and then at the end, even with a 360, we won the race.”
With his title rival Leclerc dropping to six place by the en dof the race, Verstappen now has a huge 80 point lead in the drivers championship with nine races remaining in 2022.
Perez finished in fifth place, ahead of Leclerc, meaning that Red Bull's margin in the constructors standings is now up 15 points to 97 points for the season to date.
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