Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has explained the team’s decision to grant Max Verstappen a pit-lane start at the British Grand Prix.
After qualifying at Silverstone, Verstappen hinted that he wanted to change the set-up of his RB22 after struggling for pace, and being out-qualified by Isack Hadjar, and also hinted at a potential engine problem.
However, his wish for a pit-lane start was not granted by the team, with the Dutchman lining up seventh on the grid, and climbing to third in the closing stages.
Verstappen ultimately did not finish the grand prix after a rear wing issue caused him to crash out late on, as Mekies explained why Verstappen lined up on the grid instead of taking a pit-lane start.
“After qualifying, it was clear we were not very happy with the balance of the car, to say the least, and changing the setup of the car would simply mean starting from the pit lane,” Mekies began when asked by media, including RacingNews365 for why Verstappen did not get his wish.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant to go with a very imperfect balance into the race. We still felt that it would give us a better result than starting from the pit lane with perhaps something better.
|Now it’s something we have discussed with Max, and I completely accept that he may have a different feeling, and he’s driving the car, so, so that’s what it is, but at the end of the day, there were important learnings to his point.
“The car probably felt similar to what he had in qualifying so we hit the limitations that we knew we had, and I’m not completely sure that we could have been P3 on the road before the failure happened if we had started from the pit lane.”