Max Verstappen feels this factor is 'incredibly important if you want to fight for a Championship'

Max Verstappen feels that executing the pit-stops well and making fundamentally good strategy calls is incredibly important if you want to fight for the championship. The Red Bull driver credited his team's strategy unit with the 2022 F1 Hungarian GP win as the reigning world champion arguably had the best strategy of the drivers in the top five.

Verstappen was 4th in the race behind Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, and George Russell before the second round of pitstops. It was at this stage that the team decided to pull the plug on the undercut and bring him in for his second stop.

Ferrari subsequently panicked with Leclerc's pitstop and put him on hard tires. When he came out, he had no grip and ended up being a sitting duck against Verstappen.

When questioned how important it is for the driver to rely on the team when it comes to making the right pit calls, Max Verstappen admitted that this was probably the most important thing if a driver was fighting for the championship. The Red Bull driver also mentioned team strategist Hannah Schmitz and credited her with doing a great job in the race. He said:

“It’s incredibly important if you want to fight for a Championship. You know, you can’t afford many mistakes. It’s of course, very hard, to always be on the good side, let’s say it like that. But I think we have a lot of good guys in the team and girls. Today, I think Hannah [Schmitz], our strategist, was insanely calm. Yeah, she’s very good.”

Our strategy was out of the window after the laps to the grid: Max Verstappen

There were question marks over what strategy the teams would put to use as the temperatures at Hungaroring had fallen since the running on Friday. To spice things up further, there were drops of rain throughout the race which made things interesting when it came to the variability of the grip.

Max Verstappen was one of the few drivers who started the race on softs in contrast to the frontrunners, excluding George Russell, who had started the race on mediums.

The Red Bull driver was questioned during the post-race press conference about what strategy the team had in mind before the start of the race. In response, Max Verstappen admitted that the team had to be very agile during the race and that any fixed strategy was out of the window when rain made an appearance.

He said:

“Yeah, our strategy was out of the window after the laps to the grid! So, we had to change it around and make a new one. But I don’t think that’s very hard for the team. You know, they’re very flexible, and they know what they’re doing. So yeah, it was a bit different. And also, it was anyway, it was a bit difficult to predict, going into the race. We didn’t know that it was going to be spitting for most of the race you know? Makes it all a bit more tricky on the tyres.”

Verstappen was able to extend his lead in the championship by a further 17 points and is now looking at a 80-point lead over Charles Leclerc in second place.