'I had my moment of feeling like I could catch Verstappen'

Max Verstappen was hardly able to find a fault during the Monaco Grand Prix and never really got into trouble. The Dutchman had Carlos Sainz behind him after the pitstops, but Verstappen was not worried.

For the first round of pit stops, Verstappen had to deal with Valtteri Bottas. The Finn stayed close to Verstappen for a long time, but at one point suffered too much wear and tear. Bottas never came out again after his pit stop due to a blunder, and Sainz went on the hunt for Verstappen. The gap got smaller all of a sudden, but Max thinks there was a reason for that.

Verstappen is not worried

''Initially I had Checo in front of me, so they told me he was pushing to get ahead of a few people so just stay behind him and I had to save a bit of fuel anyway. Did that and then of course the gap got a lot smaller but there was nothing that was worrying or anything behind it, just slowly building up to it, because these hard tyres are not very nice to drive around here, they’re like slippery in the beginning, especially when you come out of the pits. I just wanted to settle in first'', Verstappen said at the press conference.

''I think 20 or 30 laps to the end, I decided to try and close the gap to Max, to put him a bit under pressure, obviously knowing here that the chance of a mistake is super low and that he’s been quick all weekend. Then we went through a phase of a lot of lapped cars, that it was difficult to keep the focus, also it cooled the tyre off and at the same time it opened a lot of graining, the combination of trying to catch Max, coming through blue flags and everything, I just opened a lot the graining and then from then the confidence and the pace wasn’t the same. I had my moment of feeling like I could catch Max and try to put him under pressure a bit but after the blue flags and the graining, it was very, very tricky'', concluded Carlos Sainz.