JOIN USExpectations were very high, says Verstappen
Max Verstappen is a thrilled man not only for taking victory in his home race in the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday, but also for taking the lead in the drivers’ championship.
“It’s incredible to win here on another home track and it feels great to take the lead in the drivers’ championship again. The expectations were very high coming into the weekend and it’s never easy to fulfil that but the whole crowd has been incredible and I am so happy to win here," said the Red Bull Racing driver.
“It was quite a tough race. Lewis (Hamilton) was really putting the pressure on and both Mercedes’ had really good pace but we managed to have that three second buffer when we needed it and I think that was very important. We can be really pleased with the whole team performance. We made the right calls and we managed the race really well. Seventy two laps around this track is cool, especially in front of all these fans, they were incredible throughout the whole race, I’ve never experienced anything like this before in my life.
“Monza is just around the corner and the championship fight is tight. So, I want to make sure we perform at our best," he added.
Hamilton took the second place, while his teammate Valtteri Bottas took the third spot in the race.
In the drivers’ championship, Verstappen leads the standings with 224.5 points, while Hamilton has 221.5. Bottas has 123 and McLaren Mercedes driver Lando Norris has 114.
Hamilton said: "What a race and what a crowd, honestly, it's been an amazing weekend. I gave it everything I had out there, but they were just too quick for us. I think even if we'd have got everything right today with the traffic, the pit stops and the strategy, it'd still have been tough to get by them. We didn't get those elements spot on, but either way, we pushed as much as we could and we'll take it offline, debrief and see how we could have improved. We'll be fighting right to the end. It was an incredibly difficult race out there, physically and mentally I think it was one of the toughest, but it's an amazing track.
“The fastest lap at the end was one of my favourite parts of the race, it's an incredible track to drive on low fuel, this is one of my favourite tracks now and I've had a great time here in Holland, so I'm looking forward to coming back next year," he added.
Bottas said: “It was quite a quiet race for me but as a team, we scored solid points and there's been an amazing atmosphere here. Before the race, there was so much energy from the crowd, and it's a really cool track to drive. Very hard to overtake on, but good fun. I was pushing hard out there but we committed to the one-stop strategy quite early on, and that needed too much management really and proved tricky.
“It definitely wasn't as fast as the two-stop. We ended up stopping late in the race for safety as we had the gap behind, and I was starting to get some tyre vibrations. We were lacking a bit of speed here compared to Red Bull but Monza is a completely different circuit so I'm hopeful we can compete there,” he added.