Verstappen expects review of Red Bull pit stop decision

Max Verstappen expects the Red Bull team will review how it came to make the decision to bring him in prematurely early in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, costing him the lead of the race and ultimately a chance of victory.

Verstappen had made an early pass on pole sitter Charles Leclerc to take control of the race on lap 4, and he was out in front of team mate Sergio Perez when Nyck de Vries crashed his AlphaTauri on lap 10.

Initially Verstappen and the team hadn't thought it was a major incident. "I saw that there was a car stopped, I thought he maybe just locked up," Verstappen commented after the race.

"De Vries hadn't hit the wall, the engine was still running. To us it looked like he was going to reverse out and go from there," team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports F1. "So it was the optimum time to stop."

But after a short pause, race control scrambled a safety car when it became clear that marshals needed to respond to aid the driver, remove the car and clear up the debris scattered in turn 5.

"Usually, if you see a car in the barriers here it's a safety car, but there was no sign of it [initially]," Horner pointed out. "It was only subsequently on the replays that you were able to see his track rod was broken."

• Read also: Perez too quick for Verstappen to handle in Baku

"You could see there was one wheel damaged and it looked like he was not going to drive that anyway back to the pits, even if he would've reversed," Verstappen said, who had limited visibility of the de Vries incident.

"You cannot look into the detail of whether the wheel is connected to the car properly," he said. "In hindsight, I mean, I can't see that, but it's something to review.

"I mean, of course the team has a bit more overview to that," he acknowledged. "I also don't know when the exact call came to pit, so it's a bit difficult to say at the moment.

"But like I said we'll look into that if there was anything we could have done different," he commented. "It's something to look at, because of course that then did hurt my race after that."

As a result of the pit stop call, Perez and Leclerc got the advantage of a 'free' stop under the caution leaving Verstappen in third. While he quickly dispatched Leclerc after the restart, Perez would prove too quick to catch.

"After the safety car, I tried to put the pressure on Checo to try and get into that DRS [activation zone]," he said.

"I think one time I was pretty close to getting it, but it was just hanging in there really close, trying to really catch up.

"I probably damaged my tyres a bit too much early on for such a long stint," he admitted. "So then I just settled in, tried to do my own thing to not damage the tyres completely to the end.

"But it was just very difficult to have a good balance on entry to mid-corner," he explained. "A lot of the time here is about entry to mid-corner to get that right.

"I was just struggling with oversteer and then understeer," he continued. "The whole race I was trying a lot of things on my steering wheel to try and get a bit of a better feeling and balance in the car.

"I actually think that I found a good compromise towards the end of the race," he added. "I think my last ten laps were a lot stronger and I felt a lot happier with the car, how everything was behaving.

Of course, I was a bit unlucky with the safety car call, but I think in that second stint both of us were pushing flat out. We used every centimetre on that track and touched a few walls!

"It was a good team result and there were a lot of learnings from this weekend to take forward to the rest of the season. We bought it home and a 1-2 for the Team was ideal.

"Checo had a great race and did very well today. I’m already looking forward to Miami and seeing what we can do there.”

With just six points between the two Red Bull drivers after Baku, resorting to team orders to put Verstappen back in front after the pit stop was not an option, with Horner explaining that Leclerc still posed too much of a threat.

"You just don't know at that point whether Charles is going to pit and then he suddenly he jumps both of them," he said. "At one stage we were talking about gearing up for a double stop.

"[Max]'s misfortune was Checo's good fortune," he summed up. "It was one of those things that sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you don't."

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