Max Verstappen: I hope we win many more races

In Canada, Max Verstappen took his 41st career victory, equaling Ayrton Senna in this indicator, and giving Red Bull Racing its 100th win in team history. At the FIA ​​press conference, the reigning world champion answered questions and summarized the results of the eighth stage of the season.

Ask Max, another brilliant win with leadership from start to finish. Did the race go as you expected?
Max Verstappen: Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from this song. This has nothing to do with the opponents or anything else, but with my feeling. After Friday’s practice we changed a lot on the car, so I didn’t know how it would perform in the race. Fortunately, we chose the right direction.

In the race, however, it was quite difficult to keep the tires in working range – they were constantly trying to cool down, so I had to put quite a lot of stress on them. In a situation where the tires do not provide enough grip, the race is not the easiest.

The biggest problems related to tires Hard – in this segment it was most difficult to maintain the operating temperature of the rubber. Normally our tires don’t wear as much as our competitors, but in this race I wanted the RB19 to push the tires harder to warm up. I won by nine seconds and I think we have a great car.

Q: Nine seconds is your minimum lead at the finish over rivals this season. Do you feel Aston Martin has closed the gap?
Max Verstappen: As I said, we didn’t have our best day due to the fact that there were issues with the rubber warming up. It certainly didn’t help. I know Aston Martin had novelties, so they added naturally. So there is no doubt that they have come closer to us.

Question: What does it mean to you to match the number of victories with the legendary Ayrton Senna?
Max VerstappenA: I hate comparing different generations. I can only say that when I was involved in karting as a child and dreamed of becoming a Formula 1 driver, I couldn’t imagine winning 41 Grands Prix.

Overtaking Ayrton is of course an incredible achievement. I’m proud of him, but I hope my victories don’t end there. I hope we win many more races.

Question: How do you rate your contribution to Red Bull Racing achieving 100 victories in Formula 1?
Max Verstappen: I got them 41 out of 100! Perhaps a reason to discuss a new contract! Seriously, this is a great achievement for the team. We knew that Canada would be our first opportunity to achieve such a result. I’m glad we did – we won 100 races. Hope we keep winning. The next goal is 200 wins.

Q: How hard did you attack in the race and was there an opportunity to add more?
Max Verstappen: Fernando already asked me about it! The race proved to be difficult due to the need to spend a lot of time working with rubber. Canada definitely needed to attack more.

My lap times were faster and slower, but sometimes you just can’t attack at the limit because you don’t know where it will lead. On Hard tires I had some problems, but after switching to Medium I tried to make a gap.

If there are 10-15 laps to go before the finish, and you’re leading with a good lead, there’s no point in risking much. I may not have attacked at full power, but I couldn’t afford to relax because in this case the tires would have cooled down. So I rode about in the middle. I don’t know how much more I could add, so…

Q: Did you worry about the pace of Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton at any point in the race?
Max Verstappen: I didn’t bother, but I was constantly on my guard and checked whether Fernando was overtaking or not. I had to do it after he overtook Lewis. I judged his pace and adjusted mine accordingly.

After I switched to hard tyres, everything was fine and I even started to build a gap, but then the rubber started to have a little problem, so I was constantly communicating with the engineers to understand the state of the race .

I couldn’t afford to relax too much, especially this time when the tires got cold. In addition, you have to stay focused all the time, especially on a city track. Even a small mistake can lead to a big loss of time or to you ending up in a wall.