Verstappen Scores Another Podium In A Thrilling Portuguese Grand Prix

As he started from outside the top ten, Daniil had a free choice of tyre compounds and started on the mediums while Max, Alex and Pierre were on softs.

However, spots of rain on the opening lap mixed up the field as the soft compound proved the better tyre to be on at that point. Max attacked Valtteri Bottas for second place through the opening corners but was forced wide and then was squeezed by Sergio Perez, with contact forcing him to back off and dropping him to fifth place.

Alex also lost ground in the opening lap as Pierre held station just inside the top ten. Making use of the soft tyres, Max then worked his way back into third place as the rain eased and tried to put pressure on the Mercedes pair ahead.

Behind him, Pierre was making moves, passing Kimi Raikkonen for eighth place on lap 10, and three laps later he was clearing Lando Norris for sixth place.

Alex was struggling to make progress so Aston Martin Red Bull Racing called him into the pits on lap 19 to switch to medium tyres, committing to a two-stop strategy early on. One lap later and Pierre was up to fifth as he overtook Carlos Sainz.

Max stopped on lap 23 for medium tyres to run to the end, and Pierre did the same on lap 29, while after a tricky first stint Daniil picked up a five-second time penalty for exceeding track limits, ruining his hopes of picking up points.

Although Pierre lost out to Daniel Ricciardo after his pit stop, he soon worked his way back ahead of the Renault and rose to seventh place, which became sixth when Esteban Ocon stopped. Perez made a second pit stop and emerged ahead of Pierre on soft tyres, but the Scuderia AlphaTauri driver continued his impressive pace and closed in on the Racing Point. After one close attempt, he pulled an excellent move around the outside at Turn 1 on the penultimate lap to take a thrilling fifth.

Without a Safety Car interruption, in the end Alex’s two-stop didn’t pay off as he was limited to 12th place despite a strong final stint, while Daniil was classified 19th after also stopping twice.

Max’s podium takes our tally for 2020 up to 11, matching the total from the whole of last season with five rounds still to run.

Toyoharu Tanabe, Technical Director, Honda Racing F1

"In today’s Portuguese GP, Max secured his third consecutive podium finish for Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, while for us at Honda it was our eleventh podium in a row. In the AlphaTauri, Pierre was quick all weekend, including today, when he produced some spectacular overtakes to score valuable points for the team. So a positive result overall. Today, tyre management was definitely the key and that’s what Max and Pierre built their race on. Now we head to Imola, for this season’s third race in Italy, a short distance from the AlphaTauri factory, so it will be an important weekend for us. This will be another circuit that we have never visited in the hybrid era, making for an interesting challenge for everyone, especially as F1 trials a 2-day format, with only 90 minutes of free practice to prepare for qualifying and the race."

Max Verstappen, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing - 3rd

“Overall I’m happy with third and I think it’s where we expected to be. I tried everything I could and the beginning was of course not so easy with a little bit of rain and low grip, which meant the tyre temperatures were very low for the first few laps. I had a little touch with Sergio but luckily I had no damage and then it started raining a little bit so I just tried to keep the car on the track and stay out of trouble. I don’t know how but the McLarens had a lot of grip on the opening lap so once the rain had passed I overtook them to get back into P3 and then focused on my own race. For some reason the soft tyre wasn’t working so well today but once we pitted and went onto the medium tyres we had good pace and it was quite ok. Of course by then already the gap to Mercedes was so big so we couldn’t really do anything but we can still be happy with another podium. I am not sure what the time of the pit stop was but it felt very fast today, so I think the mechanics all deserve a beer tonight for being the best in the paddock.”

Pierre Gasly, Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda - 5th

“I really enjoyed this race! It was very entertaining inside the cockpit and I had a lot of fun with the close battles on track. I felt very good with the soft tyres, I was able to manage them well at the start of the race and when the others started to struggle, I could push to pass the Renaults, McLarens and a Racing Point in the end. For us, as a midfield team, it almost tastes like a small victory to finish P5 behind the top three teams, so I’m really pleased with this result. Especially after all the work the guys in the garage have done on Friday night to rebuild a completely new car for me, they put in a lot of effort and I’m really happy to give them this fifth place today.”

Alexander Albon, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing - 12th

“It was a tough race and we struggled for grip right from the beginning. I think the car was fast but we couldn’t show our true pace whilst we were stuck in traffic. I didn’t get off the line very well and for the first three laps we struggled with tyre temperatures, so we kept locking up the fronts. Once the tyres were hot, the car was good but recently we’ve been struggling to switch the tyres on and that just sent us backwards into traffic. Once you get caught in a DRS train it makes it very hard to overtake. We tried to react by doing something different with a two stop strategy but looking back maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do. Now we will look at what we can learn from today’s race and this weekend as a whole and make sure we put in a good performance in Imola.”

Daniil Kvyat, Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda - 19th

“It was a bad race, there wasn’t much to do after the first lap as I was already in a bad position. It was quite difficult, something felt wrong with the tyres, like they weren’t heated enough, and I just struggled for grip for the first few laps. The wind didn’t make the situation any easier but it’s normal, these conditions are always very tricky. Sometimes you have good races and sometimes you have bad ones, and today was a bad one for me. We have to analyse it and see what happened on those first few laps with the tyre temperatures and come back stronger next week.”