General
Verstappen complains lack of options Pirelli: "Really don't know what you can do"
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing were forced to go to medium tire relatively early in the Steieermark Grand Prix for Mercedes to defend their second place in the race. Verstappen doesn't know what else they could have done afterwards. The options for tyre strategy are therefore limited.
"Well, you can only really, on most of the tracks, go harder because they don’t really allow you to go softer because then probably you end up blistering and stuff and you don’t want to go with even harder tyres so… I don’t know. I don’t really think there’s a lot of option to play with because simply I don’t think they allow us to use softer tyres for safety reasons. I don’t know really what you can do."
Hamilton regulates the speed
During the race it seemed from time to time that Verstappen could get a bit closer and at least follow Hamilton. According to the Dutchman this only seems that way because the Brit as leader in the race can adapt his speed to him.
"I think it’s more just Lewis pace-managing. Of course, he knows my lap times, that the gap is not closing or growing. I’m just doing my laps. There’s always a bit of margin but if I would push more, Lewis would push more, so yeah. You could see once you have to push a bit more and you have the tyres to do so, then I’m just a bit too slow."