Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has revealed the remains of bird struck by Max Verstappen during the Canadian Grand Prix were found lodged in a brake duct.
On lap 11 of the 70-lap F1 race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Verstappen radioed through a message to his team, saying: “I think I hit a bird.”
Despite the impact, Verstappen went on to record his sixth victory from eight races this season, and the 41st of his F1 career to equal the haul of three-time champion Ayrton Senna.
Although the 9.570s gap at the chequered flag to runner-up Fernando Alonso in his Aston Martin was the smallest this season from a winning Red Bull to a rival – with the obvious exception being the safety car finish in Australia – Horner claimed Verstappen still drove “a very, very controlled race”.
“I think the biggest moment he had was hitting a bird, the remains of which then spent half the race behind the frontline brake duct,” revealed Horner.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 post-race, an inspection of his car by Verstappen revealed that the bird “was still stuck on my car when I came in. It didn’t look great. I also feel sorry for the mechanic having to remove it.”
The only other area of concern for Verstappen was trying to generate enough heat into his tyres during a one-stop race which saw him switch from the medium to hard Pirelli compound.
“From what I could hear during the race, I think other drivers were struggling as well to get temperature into the tyres,” remarked Horner.
“It is hard generating the energy, to get the heat into the tyre, when there’s only, sort of, six corners here and long straights.
“You could see the lap times were quite variable for all the drivers at certain points, only gaining time when they could generate tyre temperature, but he was able to manage that.”
Verstappen conceded his tyres, especially the hard, “were always running quite cold” which meant it was “quite tough to keep them in the right window”.
The indicator is that the win was almost certainly Verstappen’s toughest of the season, yet he still managed to win by just over nine seconds.
“We had to push quite hard on the tyre,” said Verstappen. “And then with low grip, low rubber, it was not the easiest or most straightforward.
“Everything went well, it was just the hard tyre. Probably that stint was a bit of a limitation, because of the harder compound, even harder to keep the tyre temps.
“We know our car is normally very good when there’s high deg compared to other cars. We probably would have needed a car which is a bit harder on the tyre, to keep the temperatures in.
“It’s probably not been our best race, but still, to win by nine seconds, shows that we have a great car.”
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