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(Motorsport-Total.com) – What is this mode 8 about? When Max Verstappen was behind Valtteri Bottas during the Imola Formula 1 race (Formula 1 2020 live on ticker), his race engineer spoke to him and asked what the Dutchman would think. The answer was clear: “Mode 8 is the worst of all,” he replied by radio.
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This was not how Max Verstappen had imagined the end of his career Focus
“Yeah, he didn’t like mode 8,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner after the ‘Sky’ race. “These engines are sometimes so sensitive and sometimes the drivers feel a certain harshness in different engine modes. I was not particularly interested in mode 8. So we will try to avoid that in the future.”
In the end, Verstappen passed Bottas after he made a mistake. Until then, the Dutchman had to show patience behind the somewhat slower Mercedes driver and see how Lewis Hamilton was able to get enough of an advantage for his pit stop at a much better pace.
Verstappen in the “strategy sandwich”
Mercedes had countered Red Bull’s first pit stop with its own stop from leader Bottas, which finally gave Hamilton free passage. “We were in a strategy sandwich,” says Horner. Mercedes had the opportunity to use different strategies to respond to Red Bull. “And we couldn’t cover both of them,” says the team leader.
The original plan was to defeat Hamilton with the early stoppage. Red Bull believed that Bottas would have the necessary pace on new tires, but he didn’t. The Finn had caught a piece of debris and clearly lost performance. “His pace wasn’t very good and he made a lot of mistakes,” Horner said. “That made it possible for Lewis to come in through the window.”
“I think it had underbody damage, so we lost a lot of lap time,” says Verstappen, describing the driving behind Bottas from his point of view. According to Horner, therefore, it was even more important to surpass Bottas. And when he went a little too far into the penultimate corner, Verstappen had a chance.
“Max pushed him and he made a mistake,” praised Horner. “Valtteri did a little braking test in the corner and was about to collide with him, but he had enough patience to overtake him on the straight with DRS,” he continues. “And at the time everything looked pretty good.”
And suddenly it goes “boom” …
Verstappen had everything under control, he was easily second and had a good pace. “And suddenly I lost the car on the straight because I got a puncture,” says Verstappen. I don’t know exactly what happened because when I quickly checked, there was nothing broken in the car. “
At Red Bull, the current assumption is that Verstappen must have walked over rubble. “Because he was talking to his racing engineer on the radio when the boom suddenly exploded,” says Horner. “That suggests something must have caused immediate tire damage.”
“It’s a shame,” says Verstappen, who continues his Italian curse: the Dutchman retired early in all three Italian races this year. “I don’t know what Max did in Italy, but it’s not nice for us this year,” said the team boss.
Therefore, it is also clear: both world championships are finally no longer mathematically possible.
