Verstappen wants Red Bull “review” of Azerbaijan F1 call that cost him lead

Verstappen’s countryman Nyck de Vries clipped the inside wall at Turn 6 on the 10th lap which broke the front-left suspension on his AlphaTauri and left him stranded on the morsel of run-off available at the corner.

Red Bull elected to pit Verstappen at the end of that lap but, as he was leaving the pits, the safety car emerged to allow the marshals to clear up de Vries’ car.

This prompted Verstappen’s rivals to respond and, with a less costly pitstop thanks to the reduced running speeds, Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc were able to get out in front of him.

Verstappen was able to clear Leclerc on the restart but felt that the mistimed pitstop had caused damage to his own race – and felt that it was something for the team to look into.

“I saw that there was a car stopped, I thought he maybe just locked up,” Verstappen said.

“In hindsight, I mean, I can’t see that, but it’s something to review. I mean, clearly, you could see there was one wheel damaged and it looked like he was not going to drive that anyway back to the pits, even if he would’ve reversed.

“So something to look at, because of course that then did hurt my race after that.

“You see it on the screen, but you cannot look into detail if the wheel is connected to the car properly. I mean, of course the team has a bit more overview to that. But like I said, you know, we’ll look into that if there was anything we could have done different.

“I also don’t know when the exact call came to pit, so it’s a bit difficult to say at the moment.”

Verstappen explained that he tried to push at the restart to try and close down Perez and get within DRS range, but took too much life out of his tyres in his efforts to address the gap.

From there he decided to sit back and manage his tyres, particularly as he struggled with balance on board his Red Bull RB19.

“After the safety car, I tried to put the pressure on Checo to try and get into that DRS. I think one time I was pretty close to getting it, but it was just hanging in there really close, trying to really catch up.

“I probably damaged my tyres a bit too much early on for such a long stint. So then at one point, I just settled in, tried to do a little bit my own thing to not damage the tyres completely to the end.

“But it was just very difficult to have a good balance on entry to mid-corner and a lot of the time here is about entry to mid-corner to get that…