Max Verstappen says it would not have been fair to hold off Charles Leclerc to help his team-mate finish second in the championship.
Leclerc finished second behind Verstappen at today’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, earning the points needed to finish the season ahead of Sergio Perez.
In the final lap of the race, Perez was closed by Leclerc in second place, but finished 1.3 seconds behind the Ferrari. Verstappen didn’t ask Leclerc to slow down and slow down to help the team chase down Perez.
“It’s a very difficult call to make,” he said. “You also don’t want to end up… you can actually block it. But I mean, is it fair competition? I think it’s not the best way to end the season like this.
Perez had fresher tires than Leclerc and looked like he might catch up at one stage, but lost time passing Pierre Gasly and Alexander Albon, Verstappen pointed out.
“Checo seems to be catching enough to try and move. But then he lost a little bit of time in the scuffle between Pierre and Alex. He lost a little bit of time because I’m seeing that on screen.”
Verstappen believes Perez’s best chance of taking second place was to push hard in the second stint. However, Red Bull believed at the time that the tires needed more careful treatment.
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“That second point, because the DG was so high in the middle, in hindsight, maybe as a team, we could have pushed a little bit further into the middle for Czecho.
“But later is always easier said than done. We thought we should be a little more careful with the tires at the time. We’ve had a lot of great weekends but even on a good weekend there are always things to learn.
Perez agreed that he needed to increase his pace during his average stay. “We Digit[radation] It was going to go up and we didn’t push as hard as we should have and we probably left a couple of seconds on the table there.
At one point in second place, Perez said he was losing time because of Verstappen, who was two seconds ahead of him at the time. However, at the end of his first career, he conceded that he struggled, finishing six laps ahead of Leclerc.
“I think Ferrari and Charles had a fantastic race today,” he said. “They have great tire management and they were stronger than us, especially that first time I died at the end and that made it a bit tricky, our strategy.
“When I was behind Max, Max was on one stop, I was on two-stop. And I couldn’t raise the stakes anymore. And I didn’t push as hard as we should have in that second period. But at the end of the day we gave it our all and that’s all that matters.
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2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
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