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Max Verstappen “might have spat out his dummy” in his early F1 career if faced with the circumstances he encountered throughout Sunday’s British Grand Prix, according to 13-time race winner David Coulthard.

It was a frustrating weekend for the three-time F1 champion who qualified fourth on the grid after causing severe damage to the floor of his Red Bull after ploughing over the gravel after going off at Copse.

Following an opening-lap pass on McLaren’s Lando Norris to move up to fourth, it quickly became apparent Verstappen’s RB20 did not have the pace of the front-running Mercedes.

Through changeable conditions, at one stage Verstappen dropped to fifth, a position he thought he would have to settle for until a retirement from George Russell and pit wall mistakes from McLaren left him chasing Hamilton late on for the victory.

On hard tyres compared to softs for Hamilton, Verstappen fell just 1.5s shy of overhauling his great rival but was happy to settle for second, extending his drivers’ championship lead over Norris and the chasing pack in the process.

It was a calm, measured drive for Verstappen who recognised the extent to which he could push his car that is no longer the quickest in F1.

“It’s accepting what you have on any given day, and that’s maturity, that’s experience,” said former McLaren and Red Bull driver Coulthard. “He’s won 60-odd grands prix.

“It’s exactly what we saw with Lewis out front, and he has over 100 grand prix victories. A race like this is about the long game, there are so many variables.

“Maybe a younger Max might have spat the dummy and over-driven but he doesn’t need to do that now.”

“We were just falling off the back of that, first of all getting passed by Lando and then getting passed by Piastri, and at a certain point, Carlos Sainz was starting to close down.

“I then felt we got the call onto the inter bang on, a really good out lap from Max. He was five seconds quicker in the middle sector which leapfrogged him ahead of Russell and ahead of Piastri who they [McLaren] hung out for another lap.

“But then the next three or four laps we were nowhere. It was like that extra lap we’d taken out of the tyre had hurt us but then it started to calm down.