Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Monaco, 2023

Verstappen says he was ‘lucky’ to brush the wall on his way to Monaco GP win

2023 Monaco Grand Prix

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Max Verstappen says his brush with the wall helped him avoid a worse spin on his way to victory in Monaco.

The Red Bull driver scored his fourth win of the season in today’s race. However his car got away from him when a rain shower hit the circuit in the latter stages. He brushed the wall at Portier and was able to continue, but said the moment could have been worse if he hadn’t touched the barrier.

“I locked the rears and I couldn’t get out of it,” he explained afterwards. “So I was just trying to control it with a bit of drifting.

“Luckily the wall in a way stopped it from sliding even more, of course.”

Verstappen was still running on his original set of medium tyres from the start of the race, having avoiding pitting due to his team’s growing concerns that rain was on its way. His closest threat at the time, Fernando Alonso, had started on harder tyres.

Gallery: 2023 Monaco Grand Prix in pictures
“The tyres were graining and it took a few laps to get through that graining phase and then the pace picked up a little bit,” Verstappen explained. “But it was still very tricky to drive.

“Then it started to rain lap by lap, a bit more and more. So at one point, of course, we had to make the call to go onto the inters. But it was incredibly slippery.

“When you are that far in the lead, you don’t want to push too hard, but also you don’t want to lose too much time. So it’s quite difficult in that scenario. I clipped the walls a few times. It was super-difficult out there, but that’s Monaco.”

Making the decision whether or not to pit “was quite a difficult one,” said Verstappen, “because we were on the medium initially and of course Fernando was on the hard tyre. We didn’t want to go that long, but we had to stay out. The rain was coming, we didn’t know really what was going on.”

Verstappen said he was particularly satisfied with his second win in the Monaco Grand Prix.

“It’s super-nice to win it,” he said. “Its also super-nice to win it in the way we did today with the weather and everything to stay calm and bring it home. And a lot of points for the team as well so it’s great.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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