Both Red Bull drivers insisted they were happy with the team's strategy approach in today's German Grand Prix, even though it involved Max Verstappen letting Daniel Ricciardo past mid-race.
Ricciardo indeed finished ahead of the pair in second place, and their double podium finish in Hockenheim ensured that the Milton Keynes team leapfrogged Ferrari in the constructors' table.
And even though he was the one to give up a place, Verstappen said afterwards that he was happy with the team's approach.
"We chose to do two different strategies on the cars so I let Daniel by and from there on I think we played really well as a team," he said.
"To get a double podium out of it was the main target and to score more points than Ferrari and that's what we definitely did today."
When asked by Grand Prix Times if such a switch of places was something they'd discussed before the race, Verstappen said: "I think in general, on this track, you have a lot of possibilities so definitely we talked about it and I think we did a good job on that today."
His team-mate Ricciardo added: "It wasn’t really the intention to do a three-stop at the start of the race. We knew there was a possibility but it was to try and do two and then it looked, as the race was going, that it was more and more likely a three.
"I think how it worked – because both myself and Max were in front of Nico at the time, we’d split the Mercedes – one of us was trying to cover what Nico did and that then allowed me to try something else and that was I think the reason why we split the tyres. As I said, the supersoft worked a lot better, I was happier with that tyre the last two stints. That was how I guess I got the second place.
"Obviously once I caught Max, I think it was in the second last stint, I had the DRS but he made life easy for me so that was, let’s say, a good little bit of teamwork for us and obviously the team was happy that we played nice and got maximum points today."
When asked if he would have swapped places had he been leading, Verstappen said: "I don’t know, ‘cos we are not driving for the first position. Difficult to answer that one."
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