Max Verstappen says his victory in Austria hasn’t changed how Red Bull would approach the rest of 2019.
As Mercedes struggled in the heat, it was the Dutchman who emerged with a brilliant charge to pass Charles Leclerc in the closing for his seventh Formula 1 win, and Honda’s first since 2006 in Spielberg.
It was the perfect result after the confirmation of a performance clause in his contract had reignited speculation of a move to Mercedes, but Verstappen himself knows a long path lies ahead.
“Of course it’s a race victory but it doesn’t mean that we are suddenly the dominating team. We still need to step up our performance a bit more,” he said via Crash.net
“It’s just when you have a good car you can do it [win], it’s very simple. I think I’ve had many races where I think I got the most out of it but maybe that’s P5 or P6.
“Now you win the race but it’s just because the car is working well, the engine is working well, I had good tyre management and of course when you have a good car it’s easier to look after the tyres.”
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Certainly, Verstappen isn’t expecting to repeat that performance at Silverstone, where Red Bull struggled in 2018 due to the high power demands and very different conditions.
“We need 40 degrees outside, that normally works quite well,” he smiled. “As a driver, you would always like more top speed, more grip, it’s pretty simple.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to create but we keep working. I think we were just a lot faster [in Austria].
“We didn’t have much of a cooling issue compared to Mercedes and cornering-wise, I think we were more competitive than Ferrari so I wasn’t actually losing time behind them and then you get the DRS effect.
“In the second stint, our pace was a lot better than them,” he concluded.
