Yahoo Autos No more Canada repeats; it was too stressful – Verstappen
Max Verstappen says it would be too stressful to have multiple repeats of the dramatic Canadian Grand Prix across the season after winning a chaotic race.
George Russell led the first part of the race in wet conditions before Lando Norris overtook Verstappen and Russell to pull clear as the track was drying out. Verstappen got ahead of the Mercedes when Russell made a mistake being passed by Norris, and then took the lead during a safety car period but only held off the three chasing cars — also including Lewis Hamilton — by 4.9s at the flag.
“It was a pretty crazy race,” Verstappen said. “A lot of things were happening and we really had to be on top of our calls. I think as a team, we just did really well today. We remained calm. I think we pitted at the right time. Of course, the safety car worked out nicely for us, but even after that, I think we were managing the gaps quite well. I love it. That was a lot of fun. Those kind of races, you need them once in a while.
“It’s very rewarding. It’s never an easy race. It’s easy to make mistakes, especially on the inters when they were almost becoming slicks. It was very easy to go off because the track was drying in most places, but in some corners it was still a bit too wet to go to slick tires.
“That made it just very, very difficult. It’s a lot of fun to drive these kind of races now and then. You don’t want it all the time because that’s too stressful, but I had a lot of fun out there today.
“You are very focused, but you try to remain as calm as you can be, and also the communication to the pit wall and them to you, to ask what are the conditions — and I definitely think as a team we did make the right calls today.”
Verstappen admits he had one particularly worrying moment where he had to avoid some of the local wildlife as he swerved to avoid a groundhog at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
“He was almost dead,” he said. “I started to get to the last chicane and I thought it was debris, initially, so I started to close in and then I’m like, ‘Oh my God, it’s an animal!’ so I swerved right at the last moment. I don’t know what happened after.
“I really had to slow down for it because I was a bit off the dry line. Last year, a bird flew into my car. I didn’t want to have a groundhog stuck in my car as well. I call it a beaver, but it’s a groundhog. I didn’t know what it was exactly.”
