Jos Verstappen: “His time will come”

Published on 30 May 2017 by Mike Motilall

Sebastian Vettel won the race, but after the Grand Prix, Kimi Raikkonen, who was leading the race, got most of the attention, after he lost the race due to Ferrari's choice of strategy. Vettel benefitted the most from the fact that the Fin, who was called in before his team mate, got stuck in traffic after his stop.

At Red Bull Racing also, things were not at all hunky-dory, well at least not for Max. The youngster was called in first as well and for him it also didn’t work out. Before the pit stops, both Red Bulls were fourth and fifth, after the pit stops they were running in third and fifth. Red Bull won a position due to the chosen strategy, but Max lost his almost certain fourth spot.

Because Red Bull Racing called Max in while he was running fourth, Mercedes were forced to react and did the same with Valtteri Bottas (P3). Both cars however re-emerged on track behind of Carlos Sainz’ Toro Rosso, which Daniel Ricciardo in turn made good use of. An angry Max vented his displeasure on the radio to his team.

“I can understand Max’ angriness”, says his father Jos Verstappen on Ziggo Sport’s Peptalk, during a Skype session. “The thing that got Max angry the most was the fact that he came back on track behind of Sainz and was not able to control his own pace anymore. After the race Helmut Marko and Christian Horner went to see him and they all had a chat about the whole situation. That is also up to Max, he needs to take care of things like these himself.”

Jos continues: “Max can get over this pretty easily, but wants to get to the bottom of this together with his engineer. He wants to watch the race again and then, when it’s over, talk about it and it will be case closed.”

“It sucks for Max what happened, but it will make him stronger. It didn’t work out for him and that’s just tough luck. I think Max has been very good over the last few races, very strong in qualifying, not a single mistake and also here in Monaco, half a second faster than Ricciardo in quali. He is in good spirits and needs a moment to take this all in, but his time will come.”