Max Verstappen reveals that he had to “nurse a little issue” during the closing stages of his run to victory at the Italian Grand Prix.
After qualifying second, the reigning World Champion tailed polesitter Carlos Sainz for several laps before successfully swooping past the Ferrari on Lap 15 of a reduced 51.
Having sized the Ferrari driver up on a number of occasions beforehand, a critical lock-up from Sainz into Turn 1 compromised his run out of the opening chicane and presented Verstappen with the chance to power into the lead down the Curva Grande.
Despite acknowledging that Sainz was sliding around as early as the fourth lap, Verstappen concedes he had to “force him into a mistake” to overhaul a Ferrari car that proved slippery down the straights.
“We had good pace,” Verstappen assessed. “I think we were good on the tyres, but they had a lot of top speed.
“It was so hard to get close and get a move on into turn one, so I had to force him into a mistake. Luckily it came at some point where he locked up and then I had better traction out of turn two and basically from there once we could again do our own race.”
“I was just trying to stay patient,” he added. “That was still a very long race. I could see they were struggling a lot with a rear tyre, so I just had to pick my moment.”
Once through, Verstappen immediately set about extending his lead over Sainz, who was eclipsed by Sergio Perez to hand Red Bull its first-ever 1-2 finish at Monza.
While the gap between the two Red Bulls stood at 12s as the race approached its final laps, the margin between Verstappen and Perez stood at 6s by the chequered flag.
Despite saying “everything felt good” for the majority of the race, the Dutchman admits he “had to nurse a little issue at the end.”
“But we had, luckily, of course, a gap behind so I could easily back off,” Verstappen added.
Verstappen’s second straight Italian GP victory was also his 10th consecutive win, surpassing the previous all-time Formula 1 record that he shared with Sebastian Vettel.
Having stated he “never would have believed” achieving such a streak was possible, the 25-year-old expressed the race was “definitely a lot more fun” because Red Bull had to “work for it today”.
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