(Motorsports news) The entire safety car after Logan Sargeant’s incident slowed the Red Bull driver’s Max Verstappen surge from 11th to sixth, giving the medium tyre starters a cheap pitstop. His alternative approach of starting on the hards meant he couldn’t take use of it until there was too much time left in the race to switch to mediums last. Verstappen also believed the virtual safety car, which appeared when Esteban Ocon crashed on the track, was ineffective because he didn’t have another set of fresh mediums like the Mercedes duo.
Despite this, Verstappen’s tyre advantage on the medium compound in the closing circuits allowed him to cut his way up to sixth after George Russell’s last-lap wall slam knocked him out. The incumbent F1 world champion believes that if neither of these safety cars had been present, he may have finished 0.262s behind Charles Leclerc and 21.4s behind victor Carlos Sainz.
“Everything went against us in the race with the safety cars, so it was possibly the worst-case scenario,” Verstappen said. “I really think if the safety cars worked out a little bit more in our favor, I would’ve been fighting with the guys at the front. Especially with the previous stint, which was quite easy.”
“It’s not what we wanted, but I think today was a little bit better, but we were still unlucky during the race with all the safety cars going against us,” he continued. Clearly, we learned a lot from today, and maybe what we did wrong yesterday, I can’t go into details, but the problem is that we can only show it next year if we come back and see if it’s better or not.”
Perez, who started 13th due to Red Bull’s terrible qualifying, finished ninth despite on-track collisions with Yuki Tsunoda at the start and Alex Albon later on. His collision with Albon resulted in a five-second post-race penalty, although it did not lose him a position in the final results.
“It’s better than nothing,” Perez commented, having sustained front wing damage early on. “It’s not awful to get out of here with a few points. But it was a total flop of a weekend.” Red Bull’s challenging Singapore GP ended both Verstappen’s winning streak and Red Bull’s perfect record in 2023. It demonstrated, according to the Dutch driver, that Red Bull still needs to be “perfect” in order to preserve its domination over the F1 competition.
“Everything must be flawless. “Everyone says, ‘ah, look how dominant they are and how easy it is,’ but it is never easy,” he remarked. “There are a lot of details that we need to get right, and clearly this weekend we didn’t get a few things right, and then you’re on the back foot.”
Also read: Verstappen: Red Bull pace in Singapore F1 practice “worse than expected”
