Verstappen 'lucky' to hit barrier on way to Monaco win

Max Verstappen says he was actually lucky to hit the barrier the way he did in the closing stages of the Monaco Grand Prix, and that the contact saved him from a potentially even worse outcome.

The Red Bull driver had been in imperious form this weekend, clinching pole position on Saturday and easily keeping hold of the lead from Fernando Alonso at the start of today's race heading through Sainte Devote for the first time.

But while his control of the race was never seriously threatened, the arrival of rain on lap 49 and increasingly treacherous track conditions made things tricky even for the championship leader.

• Read also: Verstappen beats Alonso in rain-hit Monaco thriller

"I clipped the walls a few times, it was super difficult out there," he told the media in parc ferme after the end of the race. "But that's Monaco."

Expecting the rain to be short-lived, Verstappen initially attempted to stay out on his worn set of medium tyres to maintain the edge over the Aston Martin which had started the race on the hard compound.

"It was quite a difficult one because we were on the medium initially and Fernando was on hard tyre," Verstappen explained. "We didn't want to go long but we had to stay out.

"The rain was coming. We didn't know really what was going on," he admitted. "The tyres were graining. It took a few laps to get through that graining phase, and then the pace picked up a little bit. But it was still very tricky to drive.

"When you are that far into the lead you don't want to push too hard, but you also don't want to lose too much time. It's quite difficult in that scenario."

He was finally forced to pit and switch to intermediate tyres for the final 25 laps. "It started to rain lap-by-lap a bit more, so we had to make the call to go onto the intermediates. But it was incredibly slippery."

He subsequently briefly lost control and slid wide and tapped the outside wall at Portier before the tunnel. It was a heart-stopping moment for the race leader - but could have been a lot worse.

"I locked the rears and I couldn't get out of it, so it's just trying to control it with a bit of drifting," he recalled. "Luckily the wall in a way stopped it from sliding even more."

Verstappen was proud of the way he was able to gather everything together after that and still secure the win. "It's super nice to win it, also the way we did it today with the weather to stay calm and bring it home.

"A lot of points for the team as well, so it's great," he added with Red Bull now 129 points ahead of Aston in the constructors standings, and Verstappen's lead in the drivers championship now 39 points over team mate Sergio Perez

Red Bull boss Christian Horner admitted that it was Aston Martin's decision to initially pit Alonso for slick tyres rather than intermediates that had been a crucial stumble that had hugely taken the pressure off Verstappen.

"We were on the ropes here," Horner told Sky Sports F1. "We knew coming into this weekend that this was going to be our biggest challenge in the first half of the year and the low-speed nature was playing to their strengths.

"We actually thought Ferrari might be the main opponent, but Fernando's just been on fire all weekend. I mean, unbelievable.

"When they pulled the covers off, you could see quite a few of them went on the hard tyre. There's rain around, so if they can go far enough, if the mediums degrade [too quickly] ...

"It felt like maybe we had gone a lap too long before going on to the intermediates. Had Fernando picked the inters, it would have been much tighter and put more pressure on our pitstop.

"When you're the lead car, you can only lose. You've got nothing to gain. And you've just got to try and work with the conditions.

"But thankfully, [Alonso] picked the slick tyre just as the rain was getting going. At that point, [we were] like: 'Max don't take any risks, just get it to the pits."

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