Max Verstappen sees the funny side to his latest grid penalty at this weekend’s Russian Grand Prix.
Having started from the back of the grid at Monza, the Dutchman will take another five-place drop in Sochi as Honda introduce a new Spec 4 internal combustion engine.
The main aim is to put Red Bull in the best position possible heading to Suzuka in two weeks time, where the team hope to challenge for victory at Honda’s home race.
Also, as Verstappen noted, Sochi hasn’t been a strong circuit for the team, despite him recovering from 19th to fifth last year.
“I like taking new engines, they look nice,” he joked with reporters in Russia on Thursday.
“We thought ‘why not?’ because I don’t think it’s going to hurt us a lot around here. It’s not any more back of the grid, it’s only five places. That’s why I think we went for it.
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“Last year we started from the back [and] overtaking didn’t seem like a big problem around here,” he added. “Maybe the midfield teams are a bit more competitive this year but I think it should be all right.
“You might lose a little bit of time to the guys ahead but realistically speaking I think you would anyway qualify in fourth, fifth so it’s not going to change a lot.”
Verstappen heads to Sochi off the back of a frustrating weekend in Singapore, when hopes of a third 2019 win never materialised and instead, only strategy helped him secure a third-place finish.
After the weekend, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko blamed a simulator error for the lack of pace, but Max was also left perplexed by the unexpected variation in performance versus Ferrari in the past three races.
“If you look at the beginning of the year and maybe Hungary, yes, but if you look at the history of Singapore they’ve always been competitive there,” he said when asked if he had been surprised by the Italian team’s pace.
“With the amount of power they have it makes it better and easier to go quick. But then if you look back to Monza you would expect them to be a second ahead of everyone and they weren’t.
“So, it’s very odd, sometimes, how it plays out. We thought in Monza we would have really struggled but I could have had the same qualifying as I had in Singapore.
“It’s a bit weird, what went well in Monza and then what went wrong in Singapore.”