Max Verstappen wins in Spain: “It wasn’t an easy race”

He did it, once again. Although he missed the pole position on Saturday, Max Verstappen once again won the Spanish Grand Prix, after winning the race in Canada two weeks ago. However, it was not a smooth sailing for him. At the start, it was quite difficult to overtake Lando, in hindsight. “At that moment, you’re just trying to do what seems best,” he explained in a press conference.

The man starting was neither Lando Norris nor Max Verstappen, but George Russell, who weaved between the cars from fourth place like a mouse and took the lead before the first corner. On his side, the Dutchman was somewhat pushed into the grass by the McLaren driver. “I think it was also very important to pass George, that was the first thing that allowed me to create a small gap,” the Dutchman said. “I think everything went well, we were quite aggressive with our strategy in the pit stops. In terms of overall performance, we had a good race. We really tried to maximize everything, but we struggled to find the optimal rhythm, with a bit of tire performance loss towards the end of each stint. So it wasn’t an easy race. Lando was coming back strong at the end, but fortunately, it worked out.”

A tire management issue

About this push in the grass, Max Verstappen joked and indicated that he already knew the birthday present of his good friend Lando. Either a large mirror, or glasses and it will be fine. Before continuing, more seriously: Listen, it’s tough racing. And if I had to swap roles, would I have done the same thing? Probably. I thought there was tarmac over there. I didn’t see the grass. You always try to push to the limit. I really wanted to avoid potential contact. Because you don’t want to rub wheels and potentially damage your suspension. Naturally, you probably leave a few extra centimeters. And those few extra centimeters meant that I had to go a little on the grass. And fortunately, by doing this, nothing happened. So everything is fine. We had a good start to turn 1, he concluded.

According to him, Red Bull did not have the best tire life today compared to Lando Norris. « He just seemed to be able to push a bit more in some corners. We were a little disappointed at some point with the tires because he stayed a bit longer in the first stint. But we still optimized everything. I can’t really say that we did something wrong in the race, but we just need to try to find more performance », he explained.

See you at the next round, the Austrian Grand Prix, already next week, to see if Red Bull’s rivals will give it a hard time once again.