Damage of Verstappen crashes confirmed by Red Bull

Both Max Verstappen and Red Bull would have finished in second place in Formula 1's championships this year without a string of errors, according to the team's motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko. Verstappen recovered to finish fourth in the drivers' championship after a poor start to 2018, while Red Bull were a lonely third in the constructors' standings.

Verstappen made contact with either another driver or the barriers in each of the first six races of 2018 – costing him places and points on five occasions.

Things came to a head for the Dutchman at the Monaco Grand Prix, when a crash in FP3 put him to the back of the grid for a race that teammate Daniel Ricciardo won from pole, despite suffering partial engine failure.

Ricciardo's woeful run of reliability in the second half of the campaign hit Red Bull further.

Marko says that Verstappen must learn that banking points is more important than trying to win every race, as Red Bull hope for a Honda-powered title charge in 2019.

"We had an intense conversation," Marko told Motorsport-Magazin of Verstappen's rotten run. "The problem was that he was putting too much pressure on himself.

"He is still a very ambitious Max Verstappen. But he realises that he does not have to be up front in every session.

"He sees a race as a whole, and he must also have the championship in mind next year. You do not always have to be in front.

"We made a kind of 'what if' calculation internally – if neither Verstappen, nor the team - because we have made some mistakes - would have made mistakes. Max would be second in the drivers' standings and we would be second in the constructors' championship."

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