Max Verstappen was not a happy man when the Monaco Grand Prix came to a close, in fact, he made his displeasure known across the world during the race when he let some expletives fly over the radio when he realized that his teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, had jumped two places in the pitstops and was now into a podium place.
While the expletives were beeped out over the television coverage, one thing was for certain, Max felt duped that he had lost out on what could have been a podium finish in the most prestigious race of the year, all because of pit stop strategy.
"It is very disappointing after such a clean weekend where everything has gone really well to then feel I lost out on a podium, but I guess that is racing,” he said afterwards. “I tried everything I could to get close to Bottas, you can say we stopped too early or should have gone longer but that is always easy to think after the race.”
“Even after the safety car, I was on fresh, softer rubber but with the wide cars and dirty air you can't make a move and I had no real chance of overtaking here. I think I did 77 laps in traffic today, that isn't much fun and I couldn't push but at least we finished the race which is the biggest positive from the day."
The team elected to try for the undercut on Valtteri Bottas for Max and they were within a whisper of achieving that, but the Mercedes driver covered them off and that in turn gave Daniel free air which he used to great effect, and that was where he obtained the podium finish.
