Max Verstappen has revealed an inability to get his car into neutral prompted the Virtual Safety Car period which disadvantaged his team mate.
Red Bull suffered a double blow when Verstappen’s retirement due to a gearbox problem triggered a Virtual Safety Car phase. This allowed Nico Rosberg to make a pit stop and come out ahead of the other Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo instead of falling behind it as he would otherwise have done.
“The team told me to keep on going,” he told reporters after the race. “I said there is a serious issue and then at one point they decided ‘OK Max, stop the car over there’.”
“And then once I jumped out, well it was in neutral but the car suddenly got stuck and then you can press a button on the top but it apparently didn’t work. So that’s the Virtual Safety Car came out because otherwise you can just push the car into the gap.”
Verstappen had already compromised his race by coming into the pits when he hadn’t been told to, leading to a slow pit stop. He admitted the mistake had been his.
“They told me to push hard the lap before, I thought was an indication to box. So I drove in the pit lane and suddenly I realised they didn’t box me. So that was my fault,. not really clever. But in the end it didn’t make any difference to the end result.”
knoxploration
24th October 2016, 3:12
Nope, Max. Your decision to continue halfway around the track, at some points dangerously crossing the racing line at a snail’s pace to do so, and then your subsequent decision to pull off but not roll your car through the access to get it off the circuit is what caused the VSC. The inability to get the car into neutral just made the VSC last longer.
XF1Fcontr
24th October 2016, 6:21
sometimes it is better to read the article first before commenting!
favomodo (@favomodo)
24th October 2016, 8:01
Did you even read the article?
Patrick (@paeschli)
24th October 2016, 19:14
Why bother doing that anymore?
If it’s more than 140 characters, people can’t keep up anymore.
Jorge Olivier
24th October 2016, 5:34
He really showed his lack of experience today: driving at that low speed for two minutes, crossing the racing line, parking the car in the outside of a high speed turn -of all places-. He doesn’t understand how dangerous his blocking is and now this. Is like he is still judging situation as if he was driving go-karts. Shame on FIA too for allowing this whole situation to happen.
Melvin (@)
24th October 2016, 5:38
What? He was communicating with the team the whole time trying to fix it and at some point they said park it and there is a marshall post right there, so if they could have rollend it, it would have been gone in a second. But the engine did is own thing. You are talking nonsense.
Broekie
24th October 2016, 9:42
Please read the article first… getting a bit tired of all those Verstappen bashers lately…
Hugh (@hugh11)
24th October 2016, 13:28
For those too lazy to read the article, a tl;dr:
Verstappen lost neutral in the car, so when he stopped it, it couldn’t be moved, it couldn’t be rolled back behind the railings. It didn’t matter whether he parked there or if he’d have parked on the back straight, they’ll have still needed to get the lifter truck out to pick his car up. The VSC would’ve happened wherever he left his car.
mystic one (@mysticus)
24th October 2016, 14:07
Why didnt we hear instructions for Ves’s car reset or what not, but they released Ros’s communication full on last time around?
Alonso (@alonshow)
27th October 2016, 16:28
+1 Something funny happened there.
Ian Bond (@ianbond001)
24th October 2016, 23:02
No, Max, you driving 40mph for half a lap cause the VSC!!!!