Max Verstappen will leave Barcelona satisfied after claiming second place in the Spanish Grand Prix.

The Dutchman managed to move up to second into Turn 1 at the start and looked to be keeping Lewis Hamilton honest in the fight for the lead, but ultimately, the world champion proved too strong with Verstappen 24s behind at the chequered flag.

"I think to be able to split them [the two Mercedes] today was very good for us," the Red Bull driver told Martin Brundle in parc ferme.

"We clearly didn't have the pace like Lewis. [I'm] very happy with second.

"[The] start was crucial to get by Valtteri and from then onwards I was just trying to keep my own pace."

At the end of the first stint though, Verstappen was becoming increasingly frustrated as Red Bull tried to keep him out to match Hamilton while his soft tyres were degrading.

“I just wanted to pit," he explained. "I think we should not really look to the Mercedes cars and we should do our strategy. But then we pitted and got onto the medium tyre and basically from then onwards it was fine.

“We were slower than Lewis but I could keep Valtteri behind so everything worked out quite well.

“But I expect more," Max continued. "After the second stint, I was happy with my tyres and Valtteri wasn’t catching, so I felt comfortable.

“We keep trying to improve but [Mercedes] keep pushing, so we’ll see.”

Asked about Verstappen's comments over the radio post-race, Red Bull boss Christian Horner played it all down.

"He obviously doesn't have the visibility of the whole picture the strategists have," he told Sky Sports. "He's ambitious, he's competitive, and he's pushing.

"You can hear that his engineer is fairly clear with him, in terms of his instruction of what his job is and what the rest of the engineering team are up to.

"What we didn't want to do [after the first stop] was drop him back into traffic which would burn up the tyres."

Also Read:

• Verstappen: 'We still need to improve' before thinking of F1 title bid
• Verstappen 'reminds me of Schumacher in many ways' - Brawn
• Hamilton 'in a different zone' as Mercedes hail tyre call

Still, after his more jovial radio calls a week earlier as he took victory at Silverstone, the Red Bull boss was impressed at Max's ability to multi-task.

"What's incredible is he's got so much capacity to have that conversation. It's like he's on a Sunday afternoon drive!" he added.