Max Verstappen counts his dominant performance in the Japanese Grand Prix as “a very, very good win” for Red Bull after leading home a one-two.
Saturday’s front-row lock-out was followed by Verstappen warning that he had some concerns over his race pace after the lack of running in practice. In warmer conditions than the rest of the race weekend, Red Bull dominated with Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez never seriously threatened, and Verstappen says it’s one of the team’s best performances this year.
“I think the critical bit was, of course, the start, to stay ahead,” Verstappen said. “After that, actually, the car just got better and better for me throughout the race. I don’t know if it had to do with the clouds coming in, but everything just went really well. Pit stops went well. Strategy, I think, worked out well. Couldn’t have been any better!
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“I think it was a very, very good win. It took a few laps to settle in a bit with the car, but I think we made some good changes to the car before going into qualifying, which then helped today.
“So basically after the first stint, some tiny adjustments were made to the car and that helped me then to feel even more comfortable and whenever I needed to go faster, I could. Whenever I needed to look after my tires, I could. That’s always a very nice feeling to have once you’re driving. Medium tires, hard tires… Possibly the hard tires felt a bit better, but overall, on both sides, I think we were very competitive.
“I was not happy up until basically qualifying, but then we did make some changes. I cannot go into detail what we did, but it did help today. It made it a lot nicer to drive and a bit more under control.”
Verstappen’s victory comes after he retired from the last race in Australia, but he says he had no concerns heading to Suzuka given the run of reliability and form he had enjoyed prior to that.
“It’s not a relief, it’s just nice to win, and it’s nice to win here in Japan. It’s always an important race for us,” he said. “The fans, of course, we have a lot of support here, and it’s great to win here in front of Honda, and basically have three cars in the points as well.
“Melbourne felt like a bit of a hiccup but what we did today, that’s what we want to do, and that’s what we aim to do every single weekend.”
