Max never stood on the podium in Monaco: 'I would like to change that'

Published on 17 May 2021 by Niels Hendrix

Talking to Max Verstappen, we first look back at the last race, where the Dutchman finished second. The Spanish Grand Prix was a difficult one, how do you feel looking back? Max says: “I feel good about it, but as a team it wasn’t the smoothest weekend. We definitely lacked pace throughout the race. It is what it is and we still secured second place and good points for Red Bull Racing. It’s still early in the season so we just have to make sure that we keep pushing and applying the pressure and start winning some more races. We are always analyzing and pushing ourselves to the maximum.”

Where do you think Red Bull needs to improve in order to challenge Mercedes? Max: “I think our tyre degradation but also the general pace of the car wasn’t good enough to really challenge Mercedes in Barcelona. I got ahead of Lewis in turn 1 but if I hadn’t, he would have just driven off so leading the race for so long made it look tougher to lose out on the win. We just need to keep on improving.”

Looking ahead to Monaco, how excited are you to race there again? Max answers: “The Monaco Grand Prix is always very special, it’s very different to other tracks, the circuit is very narrow but also amazing to drive over one lap in qualifying. You can really feel when you have got it all hooked up and the lap is going to be a good one - that makes you smile. I’ve never been on the podium in Monaco so I would like to change that! We just need to have a clean weekend, I think that is very important. We’ll see if we are fast or not but so far in qualifying we have been quite close so I just hope it’s going to be the same in Monaco.”