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Red Bull Formula 1 team principal Christian Horner said the last-minute repair that allowed Max Verstappen to take part in the Hungarian Grand Prix following his pre-race crash “would usually take an hour and a half”.
Verstappen put his RB16 into the barriers during a sighting lap en route to the Hungarian Grand Prix grid, with the contact causing visible damage to his left front suspension as well as wiping off the front wing.
He made it back onto the grid and his mechanics got to work repairing the car, completing the repair with seconds to spare before they were due to vacate the grid for the beginning of the grand prix.
This meant Verstappen got to keep his seventh position on the grid, which he would convert into a second-place finish.
Horner told Sky Sports that Verstappen “redeemed himself” with the drive.
“I think Max went off three times on that lap to the grid, and the third one obviously looked pretty terminal,” Horner told media including The Race.
“We could immediately see the trackrod and certainly the pushrod were broken. The big question was, had it [the crash] done the wishbone as well?
“If it had done the wishbone, that would have been game over so we decided to drive the car to the grid and do our best to repair the car on the grid.
“And the mechanics did an unbelievable job.What would usually take an hour and a half they did in 20 minutes and completed with 25 seconds to go.
“All credit to them today because without them that result wouldn’t have been possible.”
Verstappen said he was “very calm” during the repair, but once it was completed he was “fired up to get back in the car and show them [the mechanics] that the effort was not for nothing”.
“I was sitting in the car of course, I could see the mechanics screaming at each other, like, ’10 seconds! 5 seconds!’ put the wheel on and, I don’t know, the final piece of tape on the suspension to make sure it was sticking.
“I put my thumbs up and they were like, ‘yeah, yeah, it’s fixed’, so I was like, ‘OK, here we go’.
“And I was doing the formation lap, checking the wheels, like, ‘yeah, this feels alright’, and during the race nothing happened, nothing weird happened, so it was fully repaired. Crazy.”
Verstappen’s explanation for the pre-race crash was straightforward.
“I locked [up], I came off the brakes, tried to brake again, locked again and just went straight on,” he recalled.
“I was already struggling the whole lap for grip and then basically just locked up and I couldn’t get out of it so I just went straight into the wall.
“I thought the race was over but I managed to reverse the car out of the wall and it’s like a never give up mentality, still bring the car to the grid and see what happens, right?
“I was already just very happy to start that race, then of course the first lap was really good and from there onwards I think we made the right calls for the strategy, when to box and what tyre to put on.
“To be able to split the two Mercedes cars in the race after such a difficult weekend for us, that is a great result and something I think we definitely didn’t expect.”
