Verstappen casts verdict on Red Bull upgrades after solid performance at Spa
During sprint qualifying in Belgium, Max Verstappen held his own against Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, but in the end, he was still half a second off the pace of the Australian. Are the upgrades passed or failed? Here's his explanation.
A strong qualifying performance from Max Verstappen, given McLaren’s dominant pace at Spa, and yet another disappointing result for Yuki Tsunoda, who could only manage 12th.
Commenting immediately after qualifying, the Dutchman said: ''Being P2 between them, I think is already a good result for us, and I do think we maximized that.''
''I enjoyed it out there. The lap itself was fine. It was good. Of course the gap is very big, but it's been big already from FP1, so it's not a big surprise. We just have to focus on ourselves and work on the balance of the car and try to go faster.''
Can Verstappen take advantage of straight line speed?
Verstappen was asked if he could make use of the fact that he was faster on the straight stretches.
The Dutchman doesn't think it makes a big difference: ''When you're almost five tenths off, I don't think going faster or slower on the straight is going to matter a lot. We just have to do our own race and see what we can do.''
Did the new upgrade work?
Red Bull Racing has of course brought updates to Belgium.
Verstappen was asked if he was somewhat satisfied with these new upgrades on Red Bull's RB21: ''I guess so. It's always difficult in a sprint weekend to say exactly what they do of course, but then of course when you look at the gap that's not what we want.''
''But we keep improving, keep trying to find more performance, but other teams did the same thing. That's how it goes.''
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