Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen said he still has doubts Red Bull can join the championship fight this year despite their strongest performance of the season so far last weekend.
The four-times world champion finished within two seconds of race winner George Russell and narrowly beat the other Mercedes of championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli to second place. Verstappen was also in contention for pole position in Red Bull’s upgraded car but a late spin left him fifth on the grid.
In the race he quickly passed Antonelli and Charles Leclerc, then got ahead of Lewis Hamilton in his second stint. He gained on Russell but was unable to catch the Mercedes, partly due to a problem which developed on his car.
“What was satisfying is that this was the first time I felt like actually I could fight for the win,” said Verstappen. “I do think that the first half of the race we were more competitive because, for whatever reason in the second half, something felt off on the rear of the car. Everything was just extremely difficult, from bumps, kerbs, traction, it was just completely gone.
“So that’s something that we need to understand again, what went wrong there. But in the first half I felt really good. I was closing the gap even after the battles that I had with Lewis. It was cool, but it made us of course lose quite a bit of time.
“So every time I was catching up. But then in the middle of the second stint, something happened with the car on the rear axle, which made me lose pace, and that just stayed there until the end. So that’s a bit of a shame.”
His second place finish is Red Bull’s second podium finish of the season (following Isack Hadjar’s loss of third place in Monaco due to Pierre Gasly’s penalties being cancelled). He previously reached the rostrum in Canada, in third place, on a day when one of the dominant Mercedes retired.
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Verstappen said the result shows the progress the team is making with its car. “To be that close to a win I think is great effort from the team,” he said. “They have worked really hard to get these upgrades on the car here and this is the first time in the race where I felt really competitive and I could push a bit more. So that is definitely the positive of this weekend.”
His RB22 appeared to be particularly competitive towards the end of stints in the hot conditions at the Red Bull Ring. Verstappen admitted he might have been in a stronger position to fight for the win had he made his final pit stop sooner after Russell.
“It’s easy now to look back at it,” he said, “I do think I had the deg over George but I also knew that it was going to be a very long stint to the end. But we’ll look at it again.
“I personally felt like the laps that I stayed out, I probably lost a little bit too much compared to what I gained back of those extra laps on new tyres. But it’s easy to say now.
“We still had a very good race, to be honest. It’s been a pretty long road to be here and actually to sit here in the top three and have a real shot at it, that is I think already very positive.”
Last year Verstappen almost overcame a 104-point deficit to the championship leader over the final nine rounds, in which there were 249 points available. By the same measure his championship hopes are somewhat better at this stage: he is 98 points behind Antonelli with 374 available over the remaining 14 rounds (assuming neither of the two cancelled events are reinstated).
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“There are more races left than last year, but it’s a very big gap,” said Verstappen in yesterday’s post-race press conference. However he believes Red Bull face other challenges to becoming regular contenders for victory besides just their outright pace.
“We had very good pace but I think to fight for a title we need to be more ‘all-round’. I think we still have too many issues, from the starts to just procedural issues in the background, that even I think you guys don’t know about, but I know about.
“It’s not a big criticism or whatever. I think everyone is aware but we always want to be better, we chase to be the best. So, we just need to focus on all of those things.
“Then, yes, if we are a bit more, let’s say, ‘rock solid’, and we’ve shown that in the past, then of course it’s a different story. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long. We have still a little bit of work to do.”
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