Mexican Grand Prix winner Max Verstappen admits concerns over reliability did cross his mind as four of the Renault-powered cars which started failed to make the finish of Sunday’s race.
The Dutchman would ultimately have a trouble-free run to the chequered flag after claiming the lead from Sebastian Vettel in the first sequence of corners at the start with the German then touching Lewis Hamilton exiting Turn 3 causing damage to the Ferrari and Mercedes, dropping them out of contention.
In fact, Verstappen’s margin of victory would eventually be just under 20 seconds to Valtteri Bottas in P2 with the 20-year-old pleased his Red Bull matched the potential it had shown on Friday.
“I was confident that the car was going to be good because just looking at the long-run pace, it was very easy for us to do quick lap times. We just had to make sure the balance of the car was correct to be able to sustain that,” he explained.
“The start itself was not great because I was very high on the limiter which is not great, I don’t know why, but then it was actually perfect because I had a good tow on Sebastian and went around the outside in Turn 1, and from there on I was just doing my own race, to be honest.
Without the threat of his two main rivals, Verstappen admitted: “This was actually one of my easiest races of my whole career. I was so far in front, I was like let’s cut a corner so we get a five-second penalty just to make it more interesting!” he joked, referring to the last lap controversy at COTA seven days prior.
“It was a good race, I was very happy about that. Of course after last week, this is a great result.”
Throughout the Grand Prix, his engineer was attempting and often failing to tell his driver to back off over engine worries, but Max was already aware of the problems those using the French manufacturer were having.
“I could see a lot of cars blowing up and retiring so I was definitely a bit worried,” he said. “We looked after our engine and everything seemed to work pretty well. I saw on the TV screen Daniel (Ricciardo) had retired and I saw a Toro Rosso on fire.
“I thought ‘oh God, don’t make this happen to me’ – we turned the engine down. I have a new engine so maybe that helped, but Daniel had a new one too. I had my bad luck at the beginning of the year so I am very happy that this time nothing happened to me.”
