Max Verstappen could have finished second in the Drivers’ championships without the early season mistakes, Helmut Marko has claimed.
The Dutchman was indeed P2 to Lewis Hamilton in the championship in the final 11 races of 2018 but it was a disappointment in Monaco which spurred a turnaround in his year.
After crashing in final practice, he missed out on the chance to qualify and had to fight through from the back while teammate Daniel Ricciardo took victory.
“We had an intense conversation,” Marko was quoted by GPFans, as he reflected on those early season problems which saw other incidents in China, Bahrain and Baku.
“The problem was that he was putting too much pressure on himself.”
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Following Monaco, Verstappen would go on to score 10 podiums in the following 15 races, including two wins in Austria and Mexico.
“He is still a very ambitious Max Verstappen but he realises [now] that he does not have to be up front in every session,” Marko continued.
“He sees a race as a whole, and he must also have the championship in mind next year. You do not always have to be in front.
“We made a kind of ‘what if’ calculation internally and, if neither Verstappen nor the team – because we have made some mistakes – would have made those mistakes, Max would be second in the Drivers’ standings and we would be second in the Constructors’ Championship.”
To put that into perspective, the 21-year-old finished 71 points behind Sebastian Vettel in fourth, while Red Bull was 152 points behind Ferrari with Ricciardo also suffering eight retirements over the year.