Helmut Marko could not remain silent after the Miami Grand Prix and the 1-2 of the pilots of the Red Bull teamafter the comeback of Max Verstappen, who beat Checo Pérez, owner of pole position, after a brief battle marked by the team’s strategy.
After Verstapoen’s victory, the controversy over whether Red Bull benefited the Dutchman with the strategy and it is that having started with hard tires, the Dutchman had a great performance to such a degree that entered the pits until the end of lap 46. Checo started with medium tires and entered the pits on lap 20 after a poor performance of this compound and from that moment Max took over the lead.
Helmut Marko did not expect so much benefit with the hard tire for Verstappen
However, Helmut Marko dismissed the theories about a plan that would benefit Verstappen over Checo, and in fact I did not expect such a high performance from the hard rubbers that Verstappen usedwell the forecasts were that he would overtake Fernando Alonso on lap 25, and yet he did so on lap 14.
“The decisive thing was that Max managed to pass the drivers in the middle of the grid relatively quickly with its hard tires. The hard tire was better than expected beforehand. Max can set incredible times in extreme situations, and he showed it.” said the team adviser.
In other words, Checo lost the victory in the first laps even though he had an excellent start, so couldn’t get far enough away to compete in a better way.
Checo and Verstappen had a free hand to compete with each other
After his pit stop, Verstappen returned to the track behind Checo, with whom he had a long-awaited one-on-one, but it did not last long despite Checo defending himself as best he could. This time there were no orders to let Verstappen through As in other Grand Prix.
“We said that as soon as there is no immediate danger lurking behind, let them run and thank goodness they are both smart enough not to hit each other. Checo was not going to give in and got a little tight because They were both running on the edge.” mentioned.
