Max Verstappen has one-hand on the Drivers’ Championship going into the summer break, after claiming his eighth victory of the season at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Going into the summer, Verstappen leads the championship by an almost uncatchable 80 points, with Charles Leclerc having a mountain to climb.
The victory was looking set to go to Leclerc once again; however, another Ferrari strategic error led to the Monegasque driver finishing sixth.
Ferrari decided to fit Leclerc with the Hard compound at his second stop, despite Pirelli advising teams not to use the tyre.
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This is because the cool track temperatures at the Hungaroring made the compound near-impossible to warm-up, as Leclerc found out.
Ferrari were forced into pitting Leclerc a third time, after being a sitting duck against his competitors.
After the race, Verstappen was asked if Ferrari handed him the victory, something the Dutchman said was “difficult to comment” on.
“I think everyone always tries to do their best and sometimes that’s of course a bit harder to achieve,” he said.
“But yeah, I find that difficult to comment on because nobody does things on purpose and everyone always wants of course to try and get the best result out of it.
“And from my side as well, I always try to get the best result out of it and the team as well. Sometimes you do that better than other weekends.
“And we also dropped quite a few points as well from our side by having issues but yeah, I find that difficult to say that they helped me because at the end of the day you always have to perform yourself and as a team.”
The reigning World Champion recovered perfectly from starting P10, after suffering from a reliability problem in qualifying.
The Dutchman showed incredible race craft throughout the race, on his way to ending the first half of the season in the best way possible.
Not only does Verstappen now have an extremely comfortable lead in the Drivers’ Championship, Red Bull Racing sit very pretty at the top of the Constructors’ Standings.
The Austrian side are leading the Constructors’ by a staggering 97 points, with the Scuderia rapidly falling behind.
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Red Bull boss Christian Horner was asked the same question regarding Ferrari that Verstappen was; however, Horner gave a slightly better answer.
“Are we live?” Horner joked to Sky Sports F1, avoiding the question with humour.
“I can only focus on our performance. We did a great job today. We switched our strategy.”