F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Wolff in awe of 'spectacular' Verstappen race craft

Toto Wolff has described Max Verstappen's race craft as "spectacular" following his performance in the British Grand Prix.

Verstappen started from third place at Silverstone and hustled Nico Rosberg in the wet during the opening laps before pulling a breathtaking high-speed move around the outside of the Mercedes driver at Chapel. As the track dried, Rosberg closed back in but Verstappen defended resolutely for a number of laps before eventually being passed at Stowe.

Speaking before Rosberg was demoted behind Verstappen for a breach of radio message regulations, Wolff praised the Red Bull driver's performance.

"His race craft is spectacular," Wolff said. "The way he positions the car, you can see that if there’s a good car underneath him he’s able to pull off a great fight. The Red Bull car is generally a good car that functions well under the wet with a lot of drag."

Verstappen's pass came on intermediate tyres after the race had started behind the Safety Car. With some drivers commenting on the length of the Safety Car period, Wolff believes the race should have started after a familiarisation lap.

"I think you can argue that at the start of the race it was very wet. There was lots of aquaplaning. Now, do you want to unleash them and see lots of cars spinning off the track?

"My personal looking at it is you can start under Safety Car for lap 2 and then once it was clear that there would be no more showers, the drivers have actually seen everything, it’s up to their judgement. But I’m not the race director."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.