"Never-give-up mentality" earns reward for Verstappen's "screaming" mechanics

Red Bull

"Never-give-up mentality" earns reward for Verstappen's "screaming" mechanics

Dutch driver finished second after pre-race crash

Ian Parkes

Monday 20 July 2020 08:56

Max Verstappen believes Red Bull's "never-give-up mentality" was instrumental in the Dutch driver pulling a result out of the bag in the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Verstappen was left red-faced after sliding off a wet Hungaroring and into a tyre barrier on his way to the grid, severely damaging the front wing, along with the left-side track rod and pull rod.

The Dutch driver managed to limp round to the grid fearing his race may have been run, only for his mechanics to complete a repair job that would ordinarily take 90 minutes in just 20, and with only 25 seconds to spare.

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Verstappen then went on to split the Mercedes by finishing second behind comfortable race-winner Lewis Hamilton, and narrowly ahead of Valtteri Bottas.

"I thought the race was over," said Verstappen in reflecting on the moment when he hit the barrier. "But I managed to reverse the car out of the wall.

"And yeah, it’s like a ‘never-give-up’ mentality. Bring the car to the grid and see what happens, right? I could have jumped out there and say it’s over.

"But clearly you could see the mechanics did an amazing job to repair that car and I was just very happy to start the race. The first lap was really good and from then onwards, we made the right calls with strategy, when to box and what tyre to put on.

"To be able to split the two Mercedes cars in the race after such a difficult weekend for us is a great result and something we definitely didn’t expect."

Verstappen has conceded to being "very calm' while his "screaming" mechanics frantically got to work on his RB16.

"I was like ‘Let’s see if they are going to make it’ and if not then that’s it, that’s the race done, and the whole disappointing weekend would have been completed," said Verstappen, who had previously bemoaned the feel and handling of his RB16.

"I was sitting in the car and I could see the mechanics screaming at each other like 10 seconds, five seconds, put the wheel on, everything. I don’t know if [there was a] final piece of tape on the suspension to make sure it was sticking.

"I put my thumbs up and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, it’s fixed', so I said 'Okay, well then, here we go'.

"I was really fired up to get back in the car and show them that the effort was not for nothing, let’s say it like that. Yeah, crazy. It was a crazy 10 to 12 minutes.

"I was doing the formation lap, checking the wheels, and I was like "This feels alright'. During the race nothing happened, nothing weird happened, so it was fully repaired. So yeah, crazy."

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