Why Red Bull’s tire gamble was a double risk for Verstappen – and how it so nearly backfired

With severe rear tire blistering, neither the pole-setting Valtteri Bottas nor Lewis Hamilton could hold off the Red Bull-Honda of Max Verstappen who, after staying out for an opening stint twice as long as theirs, overcut himself into the lead and proceeded to control the race, untroubled by any tire issues. Verstappen’s victory in the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix over the previously all-conquering Mercedes team was, in the end, a comfortable one, though it was in fact built on the most slender of margins. Uniquely, Verstappen had run the hard tire in Q2 and this enabled that longer first stint.

But hindsight suggests that simply determined the route to his victory, not the victory itself, which would likely have unfolded even if he had run the same strategy as Mercedes. There would always have come a point where the Mercedes’ tire problems would have compromised them around the pit stops and Verstappen’s much superior pace could have been used to leapfrog past. But if the Mercedes had not suffered their tire problems, Verstappen’s hard tire Q2 strategy may have offered him a crucial advantage and possibly even allowed him to have competed for the win against a healthy Mercedes.

It was a similar strategy to that which Red Bull had been attempting in the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix where Verstappen suffered an early retirement when holding second place between the Mercedes and on a harder tire, intending to go longer. Red Bull did not get to find out whether it would have worked, but Verstappen’s victory was assured regardless. Pirelli’s re-positioning of the compounds for the 70th Anniversary race deliberately made it strategically difficult, in an attempt at differentiating the race from the British Grand Prix seven days earlier.

Moving the range a whole step softer, last week’s medium became this week’s hard.

Last week’s soft became the new medium. This week’s soft was essentially unusable as a race tire around the long, high-G sweeps of Silverstone, wildly overheating even by the end of a single lap and imposing an unfeasibly slow and short race stint. Just to spice it up further, Pirelli allocated each car eight of these unsuitable tires but only three of the medium and two of the hard for the whole weekend.

Even over a qualifying lap, the soft was no faster than the medium. It would be quicker at the start of the lap but overheating by the time they got to the Maggotts/Becketts sequence and thereby slower in the final sector. This allowed everyone to ignore the soft for Q2, saving them the obligation from having to use it in the race. But the single lap pace difference between the medium and the hard was significant, which made Red Bull’s strategy of using the hard quite risky.

Only Verstappen tried it. Mercedes shied away from it, partly because of their experience last week when Hamilton and Bottas had each lost a set of mediums in qualifying, Hamilton with a spin and Bottas with gravel cuts. This week, given their apparent performance advantage, they were not inclined to take the risk because to lose one of just two sets of hards would potentially destroy their race.

So there was a double risk to Red Bull’s hard-tire strategy.

Verstappen might not be fast enough on them to make Q3 and if he flat-spotted or damaged them in any way in the attempt, his race strategy was doomed. Furthermore, Verstappen could only do one run because, with only two such sets allocated, he could not afford to burn through both. Verstappen delivered the lap beautifully and error-free. Verstappen got through ninth-quickest, a couple of tenths ahead of the cut-off.

Had Carlos Sainz or Sebastian Vettel not been compromised, Verstappen’s gamble could have bust. Red Bull thought that it was its best chance to take on the Mercedes, to do something different. And by starting on the hard tire Red Bull gave itself a chance. It is surprised no one else tried it.