No other option for Verstappen: 'They should have let Hamilton win'

Max Verstappen just missed out on victory in Bahrain. The Dutchman hunted Lewis Hamilton down and overtook him round turn four, but had to give it back because he went off track. Not giving back the spot and accepting the penalty would not have helped according to Helmut Marko and Christian Horner.

The overtaking of Hamilton

Verstappen was the fastest driver in his RB16B all weekend in Bahrain. Verstappen took pole and was also very fast on Sunday. Yet Mercedes managed to get Lewis Hamilton in front of Verstappen with a clever pit stop strategy, and the Dutchman didn't get that spot back. At least, not in a fair way.

Verstappen went outside the track when passing Hamilton, and therefore had to give his spot back. Verstappen said on the radio that he would have liked to pull the 5-second gap, but according to Marko that would have been pointless.

Penalty for Verstappen

''A five-second lead wouldn't have assured us a win. We were sure that the penalty would have been so big that Hamilton would win. If he had leg 5.8 seconds ahead, he would have just had a ten-second penalty,'' Marko said in a video from Formel1.de.

Christian Horner too saw no positive outcome to this scenario. ''We had the direct order from the race leader, and Max was so sporty to give that spot back immediately. Of course it was frustrating that Hamilton had enough left on his tyres to keep Max behind him, but there would have been no guarantees if Verstappen had kept driving in front," concluded the Red Bull Racing team boss.