Sure, they'd run with them in the sprint race on a drying track, but that's a very different scenario to a dry surface with a build-up of temperature. One consequence of the miserable weather lingering around the Ardennes over the weekend was the gaping chasm left in the teams' data sets for the three compounds of slick tyre. Ferrari looks to be getting on top of tyre degradation Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images 3. Has Ferrari finally found a way to master the Pirelli tyres? In that case, the in-car soundtrack might be a further bone of contention. Nonetheless, the break probably comes at a helpful time - unless, of course, their families had booked an all-inclusive trip to Lanzarote together. There's a great respect between the two of them and that's comes out of a mutual trust that you must have between an engineer and a driver. And you've got to be a strong character to deal with that, and GP is our Jason Statham equivalent, I guess, they certainly look alike and he deals with him firmly but fairly. "GP and Max have been together since the first race that Max stepped into the car," reflected team boss Christian Horner, who waved away any concern of internecine warfare between the two. Verstappen suggested that he could push harder and that the team could do "pitstop practice", but 'GP' denied that request. Thus, the ex-Force India man was not particularly pleased when he saw Verstappen light up the timing screens on the soft rubber post-pitstop, concerned that his driver was going to expel all of the tyre life in one glory run at the fastest lap. Wary of the tyre degradation on the slicks, which had been masked until Sunday as none of the other sessions had been run in completely dry conditions, Lambiase prompted Verstappen to "use his head" in conducting his tyre management obligations. That said, they continued to resemble an old, married couple attempting to decide on which shade of magnolia to paint their living room in over the race. Verstappen's reaction, if any, was not broadcast, although he apologised to Lambiase after securing pole - who quipped that he was "slowly getting used to it." "OK, and when the track was two seconds quicker for your final lap and you didn't have any energy left, how would that have gone down? You tell me what you want to do in Q3 and we'll do it". During Q2, Verstappen was particularly peeved at the "execution" of his run plan and reckoned he should have done two hot laps in succession, prompting Lambiase to cut him back down to size. Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool 2.but he and 'Red Bull's Jason Statham' probably need a holiday apartĮvery now and again, Verstappen and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase air their disagreements on the radio - but that's true of any driver-engineer relationship. Verstappen and Lambiase radio squabbles became a highlight of the Belgian GP weekend Luckily, at that speed as well, you have quite a bit of downforce on the car." Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. "I mean, it happens, you quickly try to correct it. "It was just a bit more slippery than I thought it would be," he reckoned. The Dutchman suffered a slight brown-trouser moment during the mid-race smattering of rain, which left the track surface feeling greasy and enforced a snap of oversteer during Eau Rouge. It was a day where Verstappen could have started from the pitlane and won. Compared to his 2022 ascent from 14th to first in the space of 12 laps, this year's efforts were comparatively leisurely, but it was still inevitable that Verstappen would steamroller his way to the front once again. Once Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc had been passed, Verstappen hacked away at his team-mate's lead and breezed past on the 17th lap. Not that Perez had the resources to put up much of a challenge. But he'd face a fight to keep it, once Verstappen made his way through the order. Perez started on the front row alongside the pole-by-default Charles Leclerc as Verstappen took a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change, and the Mexican collected the lead on the opening lap with relative ease. Verstappen dominance is reaching new heights.Ī gap of 22.3 seconds separated Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez at the flag. Verstappen continues to scale new heights in 2023 Here's the 10 key talking points from the pre-summer Spa weekend. While battles for the lead were effectively non-existent and the front four finishers enjoyed somewhat solitary races, there was plenty of food for thought in the race's aftermath as F1 moves towards its customary summer break. Born in Belgium, Verstappen cruised to victory at his second home race to extend his advantage in the championship to a whopping 125 points over Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez, having won the last eight races.
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