Max Verstappen maintains that both he and Red Bull could have been in the mix for victory at the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix if he had qualified in a better position at Spa.
Verstappen secured pole position for the fourth consecutive year in Belgium, yet faced grid penalties for the third straight race due to exceeding the regulations on car part changes—specifically, requiring a fifth internal combustion engine for the season in 2024.
Starting from 11th place, Verstappen quickly moved up to join the leaders.
He executed an undercut on his main championship rival Lando Norris during the first round of pit stops and continued to hold off the McLaren driver while overtaking Sergio Perez in the other RB20, ultimately missing out on passing Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for fourth place.
Verstappen noted that “the balance of the car was quite good at the beginning,” but he encountered difficulties later, remarking, “I was stuck in a lot of traffic, which probably didn’t help.”
He added, “But we simply weren’t faster than the cars around us, which kept us stuck in a DRS train.
“As a team, we got the most out of our performance today. If I had started P1 with the pace we had, I believe we would have been fighting for the win.
“However, starting from P11, I was aware that it was primarily about damage limitation today.
“Looking at the championship standings, it was still a good day as I extended my lead, rather than merely calculating losses. So from that perspective, it’s positive.”
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Erik Junius
Verstappen also expressed that “having an engine penalty meant that if all cars faced the same issue, the race dynamics would have been very different.”
“It’s not entirely fair to evaluate my race starting from P11,” he elaborated. “Had I begun in line with the front runners, the race outcome would be quite different.”
He departed Spa pleased with Red Bull’s strategic pitstop timing, which allowed him to overtake Norris, but he pondered whether a better tire allocation earlier in the weekend could have helped him finish higher than fifth.
While Red Bull had two sets of medium tires and just one set of hard tires for the race, Mercedes and McLaren drivers had the opposite setup, with Leclerc benefiting from two new mediums and two new hards.
“I believe that having one extra hard tire would have made a difference today,” Verstappen noted.
“George won the race with a one-stop strategy, but I don’t think we had the tire wear or longevity to achieve that anyway.
“There are definitely aspects we need to analyze, but as a team, I think we performed well today.
“We made the right strategic calls to be aggressive initially and get ahead of a few competitors, which improved my race overall.
“However, we still got stuck behind too many other cars.”
