Max Verstappen says his Red Bull car gives him “big pleasure” after cruising to victory at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Dutchman completed a perfect weekend in Barcelona, topping every session and achieving his third career ‘Grand Slam’ of pole, victory, fastest lap and leading every lap of the race.
And after crossing the line 24 seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, Verstappen hailed the performance of his RB19.
“It’s a big pleasure to drive a car like this,” he said. “I think it showed again today.
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“We had another strong weekend, and that’s of course what I’d like to see for myself and the team.
“Hopefully we can just keep that up throughout the year.”
Verstappen’s biggest challenge came at the start as Carlos Sainz tried to use a tyre advantage to get ahead through Turns 1 and 2.
“I had the harder compound, of course,” Max recalled. “I knew the start was maybe going to be a bit tricky – going round the outside in Turn 1 is always quite difficult – but luckily nothing happened.”
Red Bull also adopted an alternate strategy to most, starting on the medium tyres before switching to hards before a final stint on the softs.
“We had quite a lot of different tyre strategies out there,” Verstappen noted. “I think for most of the race we were on the right one and to win here, it’s incredible.”
It was a very different race for teammate Sergio Perez, who fought his way up to fourth from 11th on the grid.
But the Mexican’s charge really only commenced after a late change to soft tyres.
“I think it was a bit of damage limitation today,” Checo conceded.
“It was very difficult to follow when we were on a similar tyre age, and that cost me.
“If we wanted more, then we should have taken a risk like George [Russell] did for example but that would have been difficult.”
Two difficult weekends for Perez means Verstappen’s lead in the championship now stands at 53 points.
And Sergio is keen to use the two-week break to reset ahead of another busy stretch of races before the summer break.
“I’m not tired. But yeah, I think, especially after this one we’re going to analyse and make sure that we understand what happened and make sure that we come [back] strong,” he admitted.
“I generally felt like we were not quite there this weekend. Hopefully, it’s something we can solve before Canada because we operate in such a small window that we need to be perfect to have strong pace.”