Max Verstappen was able to win the Italian Grand Prix in dominant fashion, giving off 2023 dominance type vibes. But why and who was essential in making that happen? The Dutchman himself answers.
At the start Verstappen cut the chicane to maintain position over challenger Lando Norris. The Dutchman then was instructed by the Red Bull pitwall to give yield the lead to the McLaren driver to avoid a penalty.
After complying with the team's request. Verstappen completed a move around the outside going into Turn1 that made his Red Bull car's pace superiority evident.
After than there was no looking back. The Dutchman would go on to win the race forcing McLaren to make a strategic gamble that didn't pan out and at the flag, Norris would find himself trailing the lead RB21 by over 19 seconds.
Verstappen: "We were just shooting left and right"
But, of course, this had not been the case before, Verstappen told GPblog.
"Up until now we've had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the set-up of the car," the Italian Grand Prix winner said.
"Quite extreme changes, which shows that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do."
After the British Grand Prix, there was a leadership reshuffle at the top of Red Bull Racing, with Laurent Mekies taking over from ousted Christian Horner.
"He's asking the right questions, common sense questions"
Verstappen sees the difference in the Frenchman's approach to directing the team's efforts to get out of the sporting slump they found themselves in.
"With Laurent having an engineering background, he's asking the right questions to the engineers – common-sense questions, so I think that works really well."
"Plus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried," he continued. "That at one point some things give you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that's what we kept working on."
According to the reginin world champion, under Mekies leadership Red Bull keeps taking step after step in the right direction.
"I definitely felt that in Zandvoort already we took a step that seemed to work quite well, and then here another step which felt again a little bit better," he concluded.
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