Watch: Max Verstappen running over a bird in his Red Bull during the 2023 F1 Canadian GP

Max Verstappen had a small incident during the 2023 F1 Canadian Grand Prix. Though it did not affect him one bit, it was devastating for a bird in Montreal. While the two-time world champion was leading the race, his blazing-fast RB19 went over a bird that was sitting on a kerb at the exit of turn four.

As Verstappen was minding his own business and maintaining the lead, he was quick to notice the bird, which went right underneath his car as he was exiting the corner. Though the onboard footage of the car shows that the bird tried to fly away, the F1 car was so quick that it was simply unable to dodge it. By the looks of it, the bird went through the front right suspension and brake duct area of the car.

Right after Verstappen hit the bird, he came on the radio and reported the incident. However, the race engineer simply acknowledged it without saying much.

The 25-year-old said:

"I think I hit a bird!"

Despite the incident, the team and Max Verstappen did not feel anything off with the car and continued to push ahead. Usually, these kinds of minute accidents cause massive damage to the cars, especially if they damaged them in a certain way.

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Max Verstappen feels Red Bull were not as dominant in Canada as they were in other race weekends

Max Verstappen explained how he struggled on keeping the tires in the right temperature window during the Canadian GP. He explained how Red Bull changed the setup of the car after Friday; hence, he was not sure how the car would perform in the race.

Despite it performing well, Verstappen had to push the car quite a lot in order to keep the tires warm. As quoted by motorsport.com, the Dutchman said:

"We changed the car on quite a bit compared to Friday, so I didn't really know how it would feel today, but luckily it went in the right direction. I think it was quite tough today to keep the tyres in the right window. They were always running quite cold, so we had to push actually quite hard on the tyre."

He added:

"With low grip it was not the easiest and most straightforward. But everything went well. Just the hard tyre probably was a bit of a limitation because of the harder compound, so it was even harder to keep the tyre temps."

Max Verstappen was particularly struggling with hard tires since harder compounds take longer to heat up. Nonetheless, the reigning world champion comfortably won the race and further extended his lead in the drivers' championship.