Max Verstappen said fourth on the grid was the best he could hope for after damaging his car when he spun off at Copse during qualifying.
The Red Bull driver said his high-speed trip through the gravel during Q1 broke parts of his floor and cost him around 100 points of down force. “Which is a lot,” he said. “A lot. We got it down a little bit, but it was still a lot.”
He said his spin was “super-unlucky” as rain began to fall as he reached the corner while running on slicks. “I came out of seven heading towards Copse and it started to rain,” he said. “So I knew that the people in front of me didn’t have that rain patch and of course they were on slicks. And I knew in Q1 we needed that slick lap in because you never know if it’s going to rain more and then the session is over.
“So naturally I tried to keep the speed up. I did slow down, knowing, because it was raining on my visor. But it still snapped on me and then I had to try and keep it out of the wall going off-line.
“Then I had to take the gravel, which ripped the floor apart. [Lost] quite a few bits on the car, even though I do think the team did a great job of trying to recover some of the bits and tried to optimise the balance front to rear.
“But that basically ruined our qualifying. I was happy to be in Q3 already with the damage that we had. At the end to be P4 is probably a bit of a positive surprise.”
Red Bull did repair work on Verstappen’s car each time he came into the pits between qualifying sessions. “The floor had a lot of holes in it,” he explained. “So you of course try to patch that up.
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“A few bits were missing or hanging, like flapping. So you want to get rid of that or at least try to put a few pieces together and try and make it work.
“That’s basically what they did. They cut a few bits off that were hanging loose so you try to just optimise the losses.”
Although Red Bull were able to improve his floor during the session, it also changed the car’s balance, which he had to compensate for at the wheel.
“I had a little moment at [Aintree]. But honestly they kept repairing the floor so my balance was shifting every lap and then I was changing things on my wheel every lap to try and find a better compromise.
“Probably in some bits we tipped it over the edge to try and compensate. But it was still a good lap. I tried to really push it to the limit, tried to really use the track…
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