Adrian Newey: Max always wants to be the best at everything

In Austria, Max Verstappen achieved another crushing victory, leaving his opponents with no chance. After the Grand Prix, Adrian Newey, head of the technical department at Red Bull Racing, was asked if he remained nervous during the days of race weekends or calmly observed what was happening, knowing that the speed capabilities of the RB19 are clearly superior to cars from other teams .

“No, of course you always have to be nervous because the situation can turn for the worse very quickly,” he replied, taking part in the F1 Nation podcast. – You saw it almost come to that at the start of Saturday’s sprint, when Max and Sergio Perez started a showdown before the 3rd corner!

You can never relax, and although we had a really good pace this weekend, there is always the possibility that some difficulties will arise, and the opponents keep modernizing their technique, so we have to keep hesitating.

When Max Verstappen decided to make an extra pit stop to set the fastest lap at the end of the race, I was a bit shocked, because in reality it had no effect on the team’s position in the Constructors’ Championship, because at that point Sergio had the best lap of the race.

After all, nobody else pitted and didn’t try to take this extra bonus point away from us, so I was a little nervous, but you have to know Max – he always wants to be the best at everything. However, our mechanics worked extremely fast and smooth this weekend, so I wasn’t too worried.

Usually I only really start to rejoice at the end of the season, when we have already achieved a championship victory, but for now it cannot be assumed that this is guaranteed. Of course, the start of the season this year has been absolutely fantastic – better than ever in my memory, but there are still a lot of races ahead. At some point everything can turn against us and in my practice that has already happened.

I remember 1999 when I worked at McLaren and before the British Grand Prix, Mika Hakkinen was leading the championship. At Silverstone, Michael Schumacher had an accident and was injured, so Mika had a noticeable advantage. But we can say that then our team fell asleep a little, began to make stupid mistakes, and it all ended with the fact that the fate of the title was decided only at the last Japanese Grand Prix.

In general, you should be more careful if you slow down suddenly. Even if from the outside it seems that the team’s affairs are developing quite successfully, we have to keep working hard.”