Verstappen was forced to chase his foe after a mistake at the start, but soon found himself back in the lead after some clever pit stop work by his team.
“Winning this race was an amazing Team effort and to have a double podium at a track like this really shows the hard work everyone is putting in here and in Milton Keynes at our factory and Honda’s.
In the first stint I didn’t really have the pace to fight with Lewis so we took the risk to pit first and to be honest I didn’t expect the undercut to work so well that I would come out ahead.
“We decided to go for the two stop strategy which worked out well as our car suited the conditions towards the end of the race as the wind became a little less and the track rubbered in.
On my side, this weekend wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, as drivers we only want to win so I just have to keep working hard, continue improving and getting better results with the great car that I’ve been given.
“Back to back podiums is still solid points but I just needed probably three more laps to get past Lewis for the 1-2 finish, so we’ll keep pushing to get it at our home race in Austria.
Max got a good start but lost the lead after an early excursion which we managed to survive and, after a stonking out lap following his first pit stop, he recovered track position.
You can see how close it is between the two teams, there is very little between the cars so we’ve just got to keep pushing and looking for more performance.
This was compounded when they opted to stick to a one-stop strategy as Verstappen pitted twice, and that meant the Dutchman was able to chase down Hamilton for the win.
Most of the time we lost today was on the straights, so we’ve got to dig deep, try and figure out where that is, and whether it’s power or drag but overall, we’ve still got a good package.
I was one of the first to stop for the Hard tyre, my front-left tyre wear was quite high and the last stint wasn’t fun at all today, the last 10 laps with the Hard tyre were terrible – I had no front tyres left.
“Today went back and forwards, we were in the lead because Max made the mistake but our overall pace was good – maybe a little bit of a margin, even.
We triggered the stops ourselves with Valtteri who was struggling with a growing vibration and that was clearly earlier than we wanted to come in but it was getting to a level where we didn’t have an option.
“Max obviously took the next lap to protect against Valtteri but with Lewis having just over three seconds of margin, we thought that he would have just enough protection from the undercut but that wasn’t the case.
“We could see the degradation was higher than expected but were wary of the two-stop strategy with Lewis as we’d need to pass Perez who had relatively fresh tyres; once Max made the move our best option was to see if we could just hang on but unfortunately the race was a couple of laps too long for us.
Norris was left out much longer and therefore had it all to do on track, but he made easy work of the rest of the midfield runners to climb back through the field.
I don’t think we expected our closest competitor to score no points, and for us to be the best of the midfield with both cars.
A good one for us as a team, a fifth and a sixth, one of the best team results this season.
“This was another strong Sunday afternoon for our team, thanks to two strong drivers, a strong car in race trim and perfect race execution from the entire team.
“Finally, we were racing this weekend in memory of Mansour Ojjeh, with a special livery on the car in his honour.
Tsunoda started from the pit lane after taking on a new gearbox, and had a clean race as he fought his way back to P13.
Obviously deep inside I would’ve liked to have finished even further up the grid in front of my home crowd, but it was a difficult race and I think we did the best we could’ve today.
We got stuck behind the Alfa Romeos, who were on a different compound, so we tried to make the undercut work with the hards.
In the race, we had to do a lot of tyre management to stay on the one stop strategy and Pierre did a fantastic job at attacking and defending throughout.
But the team held their nerve, didn’t pit him too early and as such he had enough tyre life in the closing stages to fight back and come home in the points.
The pace wasn’t there on either tyre, they were degrading quite quickly, and it meant we weren’t able to push towards the points.
I was a little bit worried but when we switched to the Hards we showed strong pace and we carried this through to the end and it looked like we might be able to overtake Gasly and Ricciardo ahead in the last few laps.
He had some front graining too, but, managed that well on the Hards on his second stint and he was able put some pressure on Gasly and Ricciardo in the close battle for sixth place.
Vettel wound up coming home ninth, just ahead of Stroll in what was a very impressive recovery for the team after yesterday’s disappointing qualifying session.
“I think we had to do something different with the strategy today and it worked out for us quite nicely with both cars inside the points.
Conditions were a bit tricky out there because the wind was changing from lap to lap, and there was quite a bit of tyre degradation across the field.
“Formula 1 is all about maximising what chances are available – and, after a qualifying session thwarted by ill fortune in Lance’s case and by understeer in Sebastian’s, both of them drove supremely disciplined races to deliver a double points finish at Paul Ricard today.
The Monegasque was the first driver to pit and it looked like the undercut had paid dividends as he catapulted himself up to fifth – but it was not to be as he ran out of tyres and was forced to pit again late on, tumbling down the order.
“Despite my best efforts, it was impossible to hold our initial position.
From there, it was an impressive recovery drive from the Briton to come home 12th for his best finish of the season.
The conditions out there were tricky, and it was hard to keep temperature in the tyres without too much graining, but the car felt good and we made the strategy work really well.
“I had a good start and did well in the opening corners, but after the first lap I had no grip coming from the tyres and was sliding around for a lot of the race.
“Although there was no rain during the race, the rain that fell this morning did enough to reset and cool the track, and therefore made predicting the tyre performance a little more difficult.
To achieve this position with no retirements and after a difficult opening lap, is an excellent result for the team and testament to a lot of hard work behind the scenes, both at the track and back in Grove.
The Alfa pair opted to go for the same strategy, starting on the hard compound tyre.
We had a much better pace when we switched to mediums, but by then we were already a bit too far back and, with all the time we lost to blue flags, we couldn’t make a difference to the final position.
“Unlike the last couple of races, we did not have the pace to get into the points today.
In the second part of the race, we weren’t able to maximise the potential of the medium tyres as we had to deal with all the blue flags, so we couldn’t really make up any ground.
Haas got both cars to the chequered flag, which considering the amount of squabbles their drivers had on track, is no mean feat.
We knew the race was going to be difficult, but I was optimistic, which I think for ourselves is important.
“I think starting on the alternative strategy to try something different wasn’t the best as we were caught out.
We’re making progress, you can see the gap between our drivers is getting closer, which is not always a perfect scenario for us to manage.
“This race turned into an intense and exciting strategic battle, with a number of unknown factors such as cooler track temperatures, rain this morning that reset the track, and wind that continued to catch a few drivers out, all playing a part.