"A race with two halves" - Verstappen

Max Verstappen admits he was frustrated in the first half of the Spanish Grand Prix without a number of errors left his hopes hanging by a thread surpassing his comeback victory.

The defending champion was running second to Charles Leclerc when he went off at Turn 4, dropping to fourth overdue George Russell and Sergio Perez. Once unliable through by his teammate, Verstappen struggled to well-spoken Russell when his DRS wouldn’t work consistently, three-stopping his way to victory by getting the undercut on Russell, then Red Bull ordering Perez to move over once again.

“A bit of a race with two halves,” Verstappen said. “The first 30 laps were very frustrating without I went off in Turn 4, which really unprotected me by surprise as I didn’t finger I was braking later or throwing increasingly speed into the corner, but it was very gusty out there today.

“One lap it felt increasingly stable, then the next lap it felt like you had increasingly oversteer in places. That probably unprotected me by surprise; not ideal, of course. Then I dropped when overdue George and Checo. Checo was kind to let me by and try and wade George as I think we were planning to do two variegated strategies.

“Then my DRS stopped working all the time on the straights, so that was extremely painful. Sometimes it would unshut halfway or not at all. That made me stuck overdue George for 20 laps or something. It was a tough one.”

Part of that spell included a thrilling fight with Russell where the Mercedes suburbanite managed hold off Verstappen through the first three corners as they raced inches apart. Verstappen admits he enjoyed the battle.

“I was a bit frustrated at the time as I couldn’t get him considering of DRS issues, but the fight itself was really cool. That lap where I on the inside, then George went round the outside, then I was on the outside of Turn 3 then was a really tomfool fight.

“I’ll squint when at it and smile now but at the time, of course, I was a little bit frustrated, but it was a really good and tough wrestle I think.”

Despite Perez stuff ordered not to overtake Verstappen when faster and on fresher tires older in the race, and later not stuff offered the same courtesy, Verstappen says his strategy was compromised by the reliability issues he was suffering.

“We had a lot of options to squint at considering it was very difficult to judge how the was going to be, so we were just trying to be very flexible. During the race you make that decision. Stuff stuck and having my DRS issue, we decided to be on a little bit of a increasingly warlike strategy, considering if I didn’t have that DRS issue I could have cleared George older and I would have opened the gap again.

“Then you are in a variegated situation where maybe you do a variegated strategy, but we had to improvise a bit considering of that. It worked out well considering the tires were very difficult. Even in my last stint, the last few laps, I had the margin overdue but the tires didn’t finger wondrous anymore.”