VERSTAPPEN’S ‘SWEET’ RED BULL REVENGE
PHOTOGRAPHY
“We just didn’t want to be in the same position as in Barcelona.” Last month in Spain, Christian Horner’s Red Bull squad suffered a deja vu defeat against Mercedes, as Lewis Hamilton charged late on to make a perfect, unexpected and aggressive two-stop strategy work to win a race in which he’d sacrificed track position. At the 2021 French Grand Prix, Horner’s team was not caught out again, as Max Verstappen reversed the late-race drama and ultimately triumphed in an engaging contest that was also laced with several familiar themes from other races this season.
But Verstappen was “caught out” in the opening corners at Paul Ricard. When the lights went out, he did not need to defend on the run down to Turn 1 as he led Hamilton off the line. But just as Verstappen went from exiting the left-hander to positioning his car left again for the quickly ensuing Turn 2 right, it all went wrong.
“I don’t think I braked too late,” he later explained. “I just lost a lot of grip suddenly. It was not one moment; it was like three or four. I lost the rear and had to go off the track.”
Verstappen’s attempts to catch the slide put him on the inside of Turn 2, where he didn’t go around the two arrow-marked blocks deep in the runoff, as required in the race director’s event notes. But the stewards did not investigate this outcome because “it would have been physically impossible to get to that point”, according to F1 race director Michael Masi, who also said it was deemed that Verstappen had “slowed and lost
