Red Bull Racing
Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen battled his way from 11th on the starting grid to fifth by the chequered flag at the 2024 Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix. That result was then upgraded to fourth when race winner George Russell of Mercedes was disqualified. After the race, his car was found to be 1.5kg underweight.
The three-time world champion finished one place ahead of title rival Lando Norris and extended his championship advantage over the McLaren driver to 78 points heading into the summer break.
Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Pérez had started on the front row but immediately dropped back to third by the first corner and eventually had to settle for seventh place.
Max Verstappen, Driver, Red Bull Racing
All in all, it was quite a positive day for me, considering we started at P11, and we finished in front of Lando, who is my main rival in the Championship. I think we did everything right with the strategy today and I had a good clean start. I was on the DRS train, and it was difficult to pass, but I think strategy-wise, we did everything that we could to the limit. It was tough to make it with two mediums and a hard tyre, and we could potentially have taken more position if we started with the hard tyre, but I think we did a good job and maximised our result today. It wasn’t realistic to start P11 and fly to the front, so I am overall happy with our performance. We are looking forward to the summer break and having a bit of time to relax, but at the same time, we are committed to being better and faster and are trying to find solutions as we go into the rest of the season. However, everyone has been doing a great job and will have a well-deserved break. We had a great start to the season, our last few races have been a bit more difficult, but we have been pushing to find a solution how to do that. The next race is obviously my home race in Zandvoort. It will be a tough battle, and it will be all about tyre management, but it will be great to be in front of my home crowd again.
Sergio Pérez, Driver, Red Bull Racing:
Starting P2 and fighting for the top positions, the race was going well in the first stint, and we managed to stay in the pack and had quite an intense fight with Lewis as well; we clipped wheels at the beginning. At some point in the second stint it went wrong with the medium tyre when everyone else was on hard tyres, we just didn’t have any pace and it was hard to push. We need to understand what went wrong as we changed a lot on the car but didn’t have the opportunity to try it on the dry as the conditions were so different from qualifying. We compromised a lot in the final stint, in the strategy we lost quite a bit of time unfortunately. We managed to set the fastest lap at the end, which was the maximum we could get today and more points in the bag. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for me recently, as a Team we need to re-group and take some time during the summer break to understand everything and hopefully we hit the ground running for the second half of the season. I’m looking forward to spending some time with my family over the break, getting back into a good training routine, and just really resetting. There is still a long championship ahead.
CHRISTIAN HORNER, CEO and Team Principal
It was a tough race today. We finished 7 seconds behind the leader, and overall, we struggled. There were some positives, though; Max has extended his lead over Lando, and Checo brought home the fastest lap. But it was a really tight race today. We didn’t have a big offset of pace today over the others, but, credit to George and Mercedes, I’m not sure they planned to do a one-stop, but it worked out well for them today. We have a lot to reflect on as we go into the summer break. We continue to lead in both the Constructors and Drivers Championships, but convergence within the field means the gap is ever closing. We will regroup on Monday, as we always do before a break and look at how we can come back fighting for the second half of the season.
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