Max Verstappen reckoned he had maximized his performance in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix but felt he could have been a contender for a race win had he started his race higher up the order.
Starting from P11 due to a grid penalty for exceeding the permitted number of ICE elements, Verstappen quickly made his way through the field.
A well-executed undercut on McLaren’s Lando Norris during the Red Bull driver’s first pit stop proved crucial in advancing further and allowing the Dutchman to cross the checkered flag fifth, hot on the heels of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
However, Verstappen was later elevated to fourth as a result of George Russell's post-race disqualification for racing an underweight car.
Despite the strong performance, Verstappen admitted that traffic and tyre management had weighed on his progress.
“We were just not faster than the cars around us, and then you just get stuck in that DRS train,” he said.
“As a team, we maximised the performance today. Naturally, if you start P1 with the pace that we had, I think you're fighting for the win, regardless.
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“But starting P11, I knew that it was always going to be a damage-limitation race.
“Of course, looking at the championship it was still a positive day – I extended my lead, where it could have also easily been calculating losses. So, from that side of course, it's a positive day.”
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Verstappen suggested that a different tyre allocation could have yielded a better result, with Red Bull opting for two sets of mediums and one set of hards compared to the rival strategies.
“I think today an [extra] hard tyre would have helped,” he said.
“Of course, George won the race on a one-stop, but I don't think we had the tyre wear or tyre life to do that anyway. So yeah, also there’s a few things to analyse.
“But as a team today we did a good job. We definitely did the right thing with the strategy to try and be a bit aggressive initially to try and get ahead of a few [rivals] and it made my race a little bit better.
“But then too many cars where we got stuck with.”
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