Marco: Max was ahead when Hamilton turned

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko released a column following the Hungarian Grand Prix, in which he blamed Lewis Hamilton for the collision with Max Verstappen, criticized Sergio Perez’s performance and said that Max would no longer be able to compete in virtual races at night during race weekends.

Max only managed fifth place in the Hungarian Grand Prix and the reason was a wrong race strategy. We either underestimated or overestimated the overtaking delta enormously, it depends on how you look at it.

We thought we would stay on the track longer so we could easily overtake our rivals with new tyres, but the clear advantage of the new tyres was only visible in the first two laps. The overtaking delta should have been significantly higher than last year, but it wasn’t and we were 15 seconds behind Hamilton.

The fact is that we were cut off twice, and Leclerc also managed to overtake during the second cut off, which shouldn’t have happened. This is a mistake from our strategy team, which usually works very well, but sometimes these things happen.

The whole weekend was difficult. For example, Max was only 0.046 seconds short of winning pole position, which made him very angry because he had hoped that the upgrades to the car would allow him to beat his rivals by two tenths of a second. However, this did not happen.

The qualifying result could have been different though. Max had to overtake another car at the end of the lap and lost five hundredths of a second or more.

Then came the first lap of the race. I think Max made a great move to get on the outside of the corner and to the left of the two McLaren drivers, but he got pushed off the track. Max moved up to second place, but then gave up the position as a precaution.

We’re not 100% sure Verstappen would have received a five-second time penalty for this, so maybe Max shouldn’t have regained the position, as a lot of time is lost overtaking on this circuit.

One event led to another, emotions ran high and this led, to say the least, to inappropriate comments from the race engineer and from Max.

Then there was a moment when Hamilton and Verstappen were passing Williams for a lap, Max noticed a gap, rushed into it and then there was a collision. I spoke to Verstappen about this. Of course, the wheels of his car locked when he braked, but he would have come around the corner, so there was no thought that he was not in control of the car. Max was already ahead when Hamilton turned around – everyone saw what happened next.

So Max finished in fifth place, although we mustn’t forget that in terms of pure speed we were behind McLaren from the start. The new features we brought to the podium undoubtedly improved the car, but not quite to the extent we had hoped.

Hungary has one of the slowest roads. On Friday the asphalt temperature reached +60C, to drop to +35C in qualifying. Knowing that tires are somewhat sensitive to the slightest change in temperature, it was not easy to adapt the car to this. On the other hand, McLaren showed this summer that they are fast on all types of tires and in all conditions.

During the race the weather warmed up, but it wasn’t as warm as expected and it was cloudy. The conditions are very difficult. In terms of power we are behind McLaren, but in the last four or five races we were definitely closest to the leaders.

Max Verstappen was quite emotional this weekend, which is why the criticism of him was not long in coming. But his condition is not surprising, because he played half the night on a racing simulator.

I should note that he didn’t go to bed until 3am in Imola after taking part in a virtual race and winning the Grand Prix on Sunday. Max had a different daily routine and slept for seven hours.

His night-time participation in the virtual race in Hungary came about because one of the riders from his team could not participate. However, we had agreed with Max that he would not play the racing simulator at that late hour.

Let’s talk about Sergio Perez. I would say that last weekend we saw typical Perez – unpredictable. He was very good on Friday – a bit behind Verstappen and was the best of all the drivers for a long series of laps. But then he made a stupid mistake in qualifying, which led to 16th at the start, but then drove a strong race and finished seventh.

Perez continues to have ups and downs. No one knows when he will “shoot” and when he will make a mistake. He lacks consistency in his performances.

Max leads the individual standings with a 76-point lead, and in the Constructors’ Championship McLaren have closed the gap to 51 points. Verstappen’s lead is three wins, which is sufficient, if not encouraging. We need to perform consistently and start winning again at our own pace.

Defending the drivers’ title will certainly be less difficult than defending the constructors’ championship. McLaren continues to gain points over both of our drivers, and this is the biggest problem. In the last stages, Sergio Perez earned too few points.

There is a race coming up in Belgium on one of Max’s favourite circuits, where the weather changes every hour. The weather forecast now calls for rain on Friday and Saturday, but the track will probably be dry for the race. The podium should go in our favour.