Max Verstappen’s front-row qualifying result at Spa owed plenty to a perfectly executed team effort, with Isack Hadjar sacrificing his own Q3 to give the Dutchman a crucial slipstream.
But exactly how much time did Isack Hadjar’s tow gain Verstappen, and what can we expect from the four-time champion in Sunday’s race? The telemetry provides the answers.
Max Verstappen telemetry reveals impact of Isack Hadjar’s Belgian GP qualifying tow
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Red Bull was only able to sacrifice Hadjar’s qualifying because of the Frenchman’s 30-grid-place penalty due to changing the ICE, turbocharger, and exhaust on his car, with each of the mentioned components carrying a 10-place penalty.
As a result, Hadjar dedicated his entire Q3 appearance to helping his team-mate, not recording a single representative lap in Q3.
Their plan began with track position, where Hadjar would head out first and run a push lap all the way to the Campus corner. Meanwhile, Verstappen was on a flying lap, but at a safe distance behind.
Just before T14, Hadjar slowed down significantly and perfectly times his exit from T15 onto the straight so that Max is as close behind him as possible without being too close. After exiting T17, the two of them almost reach the same speed, after which Isack completely moves off the racing line, leaving Max to finish his hot lap.
And all of this can be seen very clearly in the graph below, which shows just how much Hadjar has to slow down and how precise he needs to be with his exit onto the straight.
In fact, the Red Bull drivers did this twice during the Q3, where the Frenchman timed it significantly better the second time and managed to close the distance on the track between himself and Max.
But how much time does this give Max?
The graph below displays Max’s best time from Q2 (white line) where he had no help and from Q3 (blue line). As expected, a large difference in speed can be seen precisely in the section between T15 and T17.
In terms of speed, Max gained a boost of around 10 km/h on average in this section of the track, while the maximum lap speed jumped from 328 km/h to 335 km/h.
In terms of time, the Dutchman gained almost a full 0.4 seconds, which is truly a massive “gift,” while in the entire final sector, he improved his time by 0.462 seconds compared to his Q2 lap.
If we translate this difference to the timing tower, Max drops to P7 or even P8 in a tight battle with Oscar Piastri. In other words, his race in Belgium without his teammate’s help would have definitely looked completely different.
What can Max Verstappen achieve in the Grand Prix?
The red flag in FP2 meant that many drivers didn’t have the opportunity to simulate race pace and tyre degradation. However, the driver who collected the most data was Max, along with Hadjar.
According to the data available to us, Verstappen lacks about 3 tenths of race pace on the medium tyres compared to Antonelli. Although we shouldn’t take this number for granted, it is obvious that the Dutchman won’t be able to match Antonelli’s pace, while things could be different with Russell.
Russell was indeed slower than Max in FP2, but again, we cannot rely too much on these numbers. However, what we all know is that battles between Verstappen and Russell are always exciting, and it seems we will definitely see them tomorrow, especially keeping in mind Russell’s difficulties with the Mercedes car.
We can expect the Red Bull driver to give his all to maintain his position, even if it means more aggressive tyre wear and, consequently, a different strategy.
On the other hand, the Ferrari drivers did not perform any long-run simulations, so we cannot provide realistic assumptions about their pace. They will almost certainly try to get involved in the fight for a podium spot, but who will ultimately succeed remains to be seen.
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Originally published by Planet F1 —
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