Max Verstappen won F1 Canadian Grand Prix with dead bird stuck in car

There’s not much that can get in Max Verstappen’s way when he’s leading a race.

Not even a rogue bird, apparently.

The racing superstar notified his team via radio during the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal on Sunday that he hit a bird during Lap 11, but a few feathers didn’t stop Verstappen’s progress in the race — which he won by a dominant margin of almost 10 seconds.

“The biggest moment he had was hitting a bird that did half the race behind the front right brake duct,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said on Sunday evening. “A very, very controlled race by him.”

Verstappen, who has won from pole position for the third race in a row, is nearly 70 points ahead of the next driver in the 2023 driver’s championship, who happens to be his Red Bull teammate, Sergio Perez.

His win, which was his sixth first-place finish this season, gives him 41 total victories, which is tied for fifth on the all-time winner’s list.

The Dutch driver is no stranger to animals getting in his way on the track.

In 2021, he hit a squirrel during the Italian Grand Prix, a race in which he crashed and was forced to retire.

The victory in Canada was also Red Bull’s 100th as a team, a milestone in the organization’s continued rise to the elite ranks of Formula 1.

“I remember collecting the trophy that day and getting on the plane to go home and thinking ‘at least we’ve won one’. If nothing else happens, we’ve won a race. We wanted to feel that again,” Horner said, recalling the team’s first victory in 2009.

“Who would have thought 99 victories later we’d achieve a century.”

Verstappen said he noticed the bird as well after he finished the race.

“It was still stuck on my car when I came in, it didn’t look great!” he told Sky Sports F1. “I also feel sorry for the mechanic having to remove it.”