Max on Malaysia: “It doesn’t always work out”
Published on 06 October 2016 by Mike Motilall
This weekend, the Japanese Grand Prix is on the agenda. Thursday, in front of the press corps, Max Verstappen shared his view, once again, on the past weekend in Malaysia. He also looked ahead at the race at the Japanese Suzuka.
Verstappen had an excellent weekend at the Sepang International Circuit. After a decent third place in qualifying, he was constantly fighting for the win during the race. In a hard but fair fight with Ricciardo, whom the Dutchman failed to overtake, and a virtual safety car, from Hamilton blowing up his engine, the Dutchman had to settle for second place, behind his team mate.
Max hasn’t got frustrated about what happened: “No, no frustrations. You have to look at it positively. We had a strong weekend, the speed was there. We were unlucky with the virtual safety car, but even that is a part of racing. Sometimes it doesn’t always work out how you want it to be. I have a lot of years in front of me and I will get enough chances, so I shouldn’t complain about this one race.”
Max reveled in the spectacular fight with Ricciardo. “It was great fun, it is not easy to see where you are, compared to your team mate, in such high speed corners. The team let us race and we showed that we are able to do that in a very respectable manner. That is something we can rely on in the future. Had it been someone else, I wouldn’t have let him off the hook, but it’s your team mate”, the 19-year-old Dutchman laughs.
Verstappen dismisses the remark if Red Bull should have decided earlier to let him pass. “When Daniel and I were fighting it was not even clear if he would be stopping once more or not. I was going to the end in any case, while it was not even clear if Daniel was going to make it to the end or not. That’s why it was so hard to determine if he should let me pass or not. The virtual safety car made it clear immediately. After that we were racing for a position.”
Two years ago, Max took part in a Formula 1-weekend for the very first time. During the first free practice on Friday, he was allowed to put a Toro Rosso through its paces. How does he look back at that? “I am a total different person now, then it was a very different feeling. At that moment, you are still a rookie. You don’t know what you can expect and you don’t know how long you will be driving in Formula 1. You go in blind so to speak. There was a lot of pressure. You don’t know the car and you only have one quick lap to prove yourself. Nowadays, there is less pressure because I know what I need to do. You get in the car and you try to improve the car together with your team.”
In the same weekend in 2014 the unfortunate accident with Jules Bianchi happened. As a driver, do you still think about that? “It was a tragic accident. As a driver you try to think as little as possible about it, or else you cannot give it a place.”
Due to the many high speed corners, the Suzuka track seems to fit the Red Bull RB12 even more than Sepang, but still Max refrains from making any predictions. “It could be that we are stronger here, but first I want to wait and see how the practices are. Then we know where we stand. We are normally stronger in the race. It is likely to rain this weekend. A shower on Sunday would be nice, that would suit us better than on Saturday.”
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