Max Verstappen makes Lewis Hamilton admission as Mercedes sent glimmer of hope

02 August 2023 , 06:42

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Max Verstappen eventually came out smiling (Image: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Max Verstappen has admitted that it was initially "impossible" to overtake Lewis Hamilton during Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix, despite the Red Bull driver cruising to an eighth successive victory.

Having been forced to start from P6 at Spa following a five-place grid penalty for a pre-race gearbox change, Verstappen needed only 17 laps to take the lead. After passing Mercedes ' Hamilton, Ferrari 's Charles Leclerc and team-mate Sergio Perez, the 2023 champion elect never looked back before romping to victory.

But Verstappen insists that his win wasn't so easy as one would assume, giving neutral fans some hope that the Dutchman might not to be unbeatable. "I was a bit unlucky, because I got stuck behind Lewis, because he was in the DRS of Charles, and with them having the highest top speed, Lewis, this weekend, it was just impossible to pass," Verstappen explained.

"So I had to wait for him to drop out of the DRS and as soon as he didn't have DRS anymore, I could pass. And then I think two or three laps later, I could pass Charles. But with that, I think I hurt my tyres a bit too much.

"So basically, as soon as I had my stop on to the Medium, I could feel that the car was in a much better window and I could go a lot faster. So yeah, from there onwards that was really where it started to come alive."

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As for Hamilton, he had to own a five-second penalty after colliding with Perez through Turns 14 and 15. The 38-year-old Briton and seven-time F1 champion, whose last title triumph came in 2020, disagreed with the decision, telling Sky Sports : "(Perez) was pretty slow and went wide and slow through 14.

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Lewis Hamilton started in front of Max Verstappen at the Belgian Grand Prix (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

"I got a great exit, I was more than half a car alongside him and we just ended up coming together. It was a bit of a racing incident really. Naturally it wasn't intentional but they (the stewards) saw it differently.

"It was very tricky conditions out there, so we were all trying our best. Anyways it doesn't make a huge difference, fourth or seventh in the Sprint you don't get a lot of points."

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also felt let down by the stewards' decision to penalise his driver. "Absolute racing incident. This is a Sprint race, we want to see them racing," Wolff declared post-race.

"The argument of the damage isn't valid because he was going backwards before then, massively backwards. And I think when you look at that corner, they were side-by-side and fair enough, it takes two to tango, but it's a racing incident. For me that's pretty clear."

Perez said of the incident: "Lewis just crashed into me and took the whole right-hand side of my car off so we basically lost all of the load. Unfortunately that meant no points today."

Nathan Ridley