Max unpretentious after productive Wednesday in Spain: 'Focusing on ourselves'
Published on 27 February 2020 by Mike Motilall
Max Verstappen rounded up the fourth day of off-season testing in Barcelona with 83 laps to his name. His fastest time, 1:17.347, done on the yellow C3-tyres earned the Dutchman the second spot. A spin in the closing seconds of the session, brought the RB16 to a standstill. But that doesn’t mean that Aston Martin Red Bull Racing cannot look back at another productive afternoon.
After a day of testing, Max sheds some light on the details concerning the tests they performed today: ‘We did two fast laps and in between a cooldown-lap the whole time, after which we did a long run. This was continuously, so I came in the pits for an adjustment to the front wing and then continued on. That is how we want to test.”
The youngster remains, despite a productive afternoon, unpretentious about how competitive the RB16 can really be: “It is very difficult to say now of the car is good enough or not. Everything feels quick and it also feels like we have enough grip, but the other cars have that as well. Testing doesn’t say that much. The most important thing is that we try a lot of things out and get to know how the car responds.”
“We need to do better than last year and are working hard on that as well. So far the car definitely feels like an improvement, and that is also what is needed if you want to fight for the championship. We are focusing on ourselves and then we’ll see where we stand in Melbourne”, says Max.
To conclude matters, Verstappen shortly explains his spin in Turn ten right before the end of the session: “I suddenly spun, but that wasn’t my fault. We are going to look into that.”
When the lunch break is over, work gets back underway in Barcelona. It is also announced that the delay at Red Bull in the morning session was caused by a problem with the suspension. The issue seems solved when we see Max, after well over twenty minutes, leave the pits on a set of the white C1-tyres.
By the time we get to the hour-and-a-half mark in the afternoon session, Verstappen has managed to lap the track thirty times. He did this on the C2-tyres with a 1:18.054 as his fastest time. After a brief visit in the pits, the Dutchman gets underway for a fifteen-lap stint before reporting back to his team.
The afternoon runs without a hitch for Max. With still an hour on the clock, the eight time Grand Prix-winner has 59 laps to his name on Cicruit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
As the sun slowly sets, and the end of the session has arrived, Max does another run on the yellow C3-tyres, with which he manages to improve his time to a 1:17.347. Right before the chequered flag is dropped, the youngster comes to a standstill in Turn ten. Daniil Kvyat also halts his AlphaTauri trackside at almost the same time, but does this two corners earlier.
The incidents trigger a code red and the session, with still some seconds left, is aborted. Of the six days of testing so far, Max ends the fourth day with 83 laps to his name. This means that Red Bull exceeded the 100 lap-mark today by a great margin.
Tomorrow, Max will run the morning session after which he will hand control over to team mate Alexander Albon.
