Max Verstappen was quite ill during the last Dutch GP at Zandvoort. The four-time world champion already said during the race weekend in the Dutch dunes that he did not feel fit. Afterwards, Verstappen needed several days to recover. He is now much fitter at the start of the Italian race weekend in Monza: “It had been a long time since I felt like this.”
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The very last home race for Max Verstappen at Zandvoort ended in a disappointment. During qualifying on Saturday, seventh place was the best he could manage due to the lack of pace from the Red Bull car. The Dutchman went hunting for a better result for his home crowd during the race, but it ended in the barriers in the first lap. Verstappen lost control of his RB22 in the Arie Luyendijk corner, just as he was getting on the throttle on a wet patch of track.
On top of that, Verstappen did not feel fit throughout the entire race weekend in Zandvoort. Fortunately, his crash had no further impact on the Red Bull driver. “After the crash, I felt okay,” Verstappen told the media in Monza. “It was the SAFER barrier and the first time I experienced something like that. The component really did its job very well, to be honest. Apart from that, I was just very sick.”
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‘It had been a long time since I felt like this’
It also took longer for Verstappen to fully recover from the illness. “When you have been that sick, you appreciate how nice it is to fully recover, because the weekend at Zandvoort was terrible. Even the few days after Zandvoort, I still didn’t feel well,” he says. Verstappen is now completely back to normal. “It was really nice to have a week of rest, to recover and to feel better again, because it had been a long time since I felt like this.”
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