Max on his catch up-race in Sochi: 'Didn't expect to be fifth after eight laps'

Published on 02 October 2018 by Mike Motilall

On his 21st birthday, Max Verstappen drove an excellent catch up-race. Having started the race from P19, the Dutchman was already running in fifth after eight laps and, by then, had done quite an amount of successful overtaking.

In front of Sky Sports’ camera’s, Max reviews his race extensively: “I had a good launch and despite that I had to avoid a Toro Rosso I still had a lot of traction. Then on the straight I tried to get a tow. Luckily Fernando Alonso was very nice to me in Turn two. We stayed on track in Turn two which is of course very important. In Turn four I tried to stay in the middle, because the wake of other cars in a fast corner can be very tricky.”

After the start, Max took down his peers one by one. The Dutchman sheds some light on his push forward: “Before the race I for sure did not expect to be in P5 after eight laps already. Everything just went clean. The tyres had good grip straight away. You could see other drivers struggling with the front of the car. This made us being able to turn the car better in the 90 degrees corners and I was able to pick up the throttle a lot earlier. I think we had a good compromise with the rear wing this weekend. The car had a lot of rear grip, so I am very happy with that.”

Regarding his move on Romain Grosjean, Max says: “He went to the right, so I went left and I could go around him.” Overtaking Esteban Ocon, the same story: “He had more top speed than I expected, but again we got by quite cleanly.”

Overtaking Kevin Magnussen did cause Verstappen’s heart to skip a beat: “Everything went well but then I saw in my mirror that when he was braking that he locked up a little bit. So then I released my brake a bit to make sure he didn’t crash into the back of me, but eventually it was all good.”

Finally, Max is certain that Red Bull Racing made the right decision to change a great many parts of the drive shaft this weekend, considering the races in Mexico and Japan where the team has performed well over the past years: “Because we started at the back we could choose our tyres so that gave us the best strategy. It is difficult to say what we could have done had we started fifth or sixth. I think this was the right track to take those grid penalties.”