Max Verstappen says Red Bull need to continue performing at the level they did last weekend if he is to fight for this year’s world championship.
Verstappen took six points off championship leader Oscar Piastri in Canada. He remains third in the standings, now 43 points behind the McLaren driver.
Although Red Bull were stronger in Canada, Verstappen said McLaren also had a less competitive weekend which helped to tip the balance in his favour.
“I hope that we can start every weekend like this in terms of how I feel with the car, but overall, we do need more performance to be quick everywhere,” he said. “I also think that this weekend was – I wouldn’t say an ‘off’ weekend – but McLaren wasn’t as strong as normal. And, of course, we benefited a little bit.
“But if we go to all the other tracks now coming up, we definitely need more performance to even be close to them. This has been a good weekend for us, but we need a lot more to be able to fight with them for the whole season.”
Verstappen finished second behind George Russell in Canada. He said the team’s strategy of running aggressively short opening stints paid off.
“The first two stints I was struggling a lot with the tyres,” he said. “Just too much degradation again.
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“So we drove quite a defensive race, to be honest, because basically two times, Kimi was about to overtake me, and we boxed. So that worked out quite well for me.
“We did a very aggressive strategy. I think at the last pit stop, I was a bit worried if I was going to make it to the end competitively because on the hard tyre in the second stint, I was already struggling as well. So I think just a lighter fuel load helped a bit.”
However he didn’t feel he had the pace to attack Russell to win. “The gap wasn’t that big towards George and I never really felt like I had the pace to do anything,” he said. “It was more about just looking in the mirror, trying to maintain that gap, try to look after my tyres to not overstress them.
“It was not the easiest race, but I think as a team we managed it well. I think we definitely optimised everything we could because, honestly, throughout the whole race, I never really felt like I was actually holding on to second.”
Verstappen won seven of the first 10 rounds last year but has only taken two victories over the same spell this year. He said that must change if he is to mount a bid for the title this year.
“We need to start winning races more often. How do we do that? By being more competitive.
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“Now, this was a good weekend, but again, not competitive enough. Like I said before, we have our moments where maybe we can win here or there, but we just need to make the car faster. Then we make it a lot easier for ourselves.
“We’re working hard on it with the team, of course, bits are coming, but is it going to be enough? I don’t know. It’s small margins in this world that can give you better results every single weekend.
“But what I think so far, what McLaren has shown this whole season is quite extraordinary and difficult to beat. So now, okay, one weekend is not as good, but they are still by far the favourites. And that’s not going to be something that is easily beaten. But the coming races, we really want to try and improve our car.”
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