Max Verstappen: I was not unlucky on Friday

Max Verstappen won the Miami Grand Prix for his third win of the season. The Red Bull Racing driver narrowed the gap to Charles Leclerc in the individual standings to nineteen points. After the finish, Max summed up the weekend…

Q: During the race, Sergio Perez had technical problems with the power plant. Do you have doubts about the reliability?
Max Verstappen: Luckily I had no technical problems with the car during the race. From this point of view, the race went smoothly, which is positive. I think I exhausted the whole limit of bad luck on Friday. Only after the restart did problems arise with the tires warming up, making it difficult to drive through the chicane.

I made a few mistakes during the race, but the main thing was to get out of the chicane and corner 16 on the straight correctly. It helped me that our car had an advantage in top speed.

Q: Over the weekend you mentioned several times that something was wrong with the car and that it was necessary to smooth out the situation. Did you manage to solve the problems before the race?
Max Verstappen: When I said that, I meant that I had a lot of problems on Friday, which had an impact on the course of my weekend, especially during qualifying. In the race everything went smoothly, especially at the start, but it could have turned out differently as I almost missed Friday.

We should have a positive weekend with no problems. This was the stage in Imola, but we missed something there too. It is necessary to ensure high reliability and the like. But in addition to reliability, we also need the speed we have and I like that. If the car were reliable, but slow, this wouldn’t be good either.

Q: Max, in the individual competition, do you like to play in the role of a catcher or in the role of someone being overtaken?
Max Verstappen: I am happy with my current position, as we have a fast car. They overtook me at the end of last year and I wasn’t thrilled about that, because I knew our car didn’t have enough speed. I understood that the end of the season would be difficult. In fact, the answer to this question depends on how competitive your car is.

Question Over the weekend there was a lot of talk about the coverage of the route. Do you think the organizers will have to completely shift the asphalt for next year’s race?
Max Verstappen: I think the grip could be higher outside the track, but in the race everything worked out well. I was surprised by the situation at the start, when I attacked in the outer radius, and the grip turned out to be quite good, but as the race went on it went up and down.

We have examples where good asphalt was immediately laid on new tracks. For example in Saudi Arabia. There, the coating provides a fairly high grip. Obviously the grip is higher on the race track than off it, but in Miami the difference was too big.

We’ll see what we can do with it, but other than the clutch, you can think of something with the configuration, especially with the second sector, to make the track more interesting.

Question: Does the chicane in the second sector also need to be changed?
Max Verstappen: If we raced go-karts it would be a cool chicane, but we drive Formula 1 cars. I only did four fast laps on Friday and on one of them I nearly crashed into the wall in the chicane, hitting a curb. This curb is too long, too wide and stiff – it just wasn’t meant to fit into that chicane.

It may be worth replacing the curb with a more suitable one. It is possible that this will help. Also, the chicane itself is too slow. Perhaps it would be better if a smoother number of turns appeared instead of the chicane.