The victory in Montreal for Red Bull driver Max Verstappen is even more impressive when you consider that he contested the majority of the Canadian Grand Prix with the corpse of a bird stuck under his car.
On Sunday, the Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship leader hit the poor bird on the 11th of the race’s 70 laps. He pointed this out to his team.
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The body of the bird, however, remained stuck in the right brake duct of Verstappen’s single-seater and remained there until the end of hostilities on the Gilles-Villeneuve circuit.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner highlighted his driver’s ability to handle any situation when asked about the incident involving the tetrapod vertebrate.
“It was a race where he was really, really in control,” he said.
It is also not the first time that Verstappen has hit an animal in his F1 car. At the Italian Grand Prix in 2021, he had put an end to the days of a squirrel. This time, the Dutchman took second place in the race.