Verstappen: The driving experience is the same, but everything is a little better

Max Verstappen achieved a clear victory in Bahrain, but he does not expect it to be so easy to succeed on future circuits.

Question: The first race of the season – and the first win of the year. Was this race really as easy for you as it seemed from the outside??

MaxVerstappen: Today probably went better than we expected. This may be due to changes in wind direction and strength. In general, the car’s behavior has indeed improved somewhat. It was more comfortable to drive and at the same time I was able to control tire wear quite well. So the impressions are quite positive.

I’m very happy that the start of the season was so successful, but I’m also happy for the team because we won the double, which is just great. At the same time, I believe that the other teams were able to close the gap. But today everything went very well, although I obviously don’t expect this to happen at every Grand Prix. But we are happy with the success, and now we will of course analyze everything and try to perform even better.

Question: After such a race, do you feel some kind of relief if it turns out that you continue to dominate?

MaxVerstappen: Yes, but we saw that the qualifying results were very tight, so there are obviously some things we can do better. This is what we will focus on in the next stages of the season.

Question: Let’s move on to the next race: are you confident of success ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix?

MaxVerstappen: The track configuration is completely different there, there are many more fast corners. The properties of the asphalt surface are of course also completely different from those in Bahrain, so the degradation of rubber will not be as intense. This probably plays into the hands of other teams. It seems like we always do better on tracks like this, so I don’t expect it will be easy for us in Jeddah.

Question: In the race your advantage is clearly greater than in qualifying – is this due to the changed conditions, as you said, or is this a feature of the Red Bull Racing concept? In the latter case, do you have to pay special attention to the settings, or is this just a natural characteristic of Red Bull cars?

MaxVerstappen: I think for some reason the car is not that efficient in one fast lap. Fortunately, it performs well over race distances on most tracks. Obviously we pay more attention to the race, but it looks like the rivals in qualifying can probably get a little more out of their cars.

This is what we will be doing in the coming phases of the season. But again, I really think the track conditions were more favorable for us than the previous days.

Question: Today you were one lap ahead of half your opponents. What kind of performances can we expect from you this season? Are you going to break more records, or will you have to fight in the championship at some point, and everything will not be so easy?

MaxVerstappen: I haven’t thought about it yet. I prepare for each race separately because there are many different scenarios. In general, I don’t want to think about all these topics yet. Now I just want to perform better every race, but I don’t think too far ahead.

Q: What can you say about driving the new Red Bull car compared to last year’s RB19? Does this require a styling tweak, or does the ride feel more or less the same? Did you feel some sort of relief when you realized the RB20 was working flawlessly? After all, some other teams had not been able to get their modernized cars to work efficiently…

MaxVerstappen: I think the driving experience is pretty much the same, but everything is just a little bit better. I think this is exactly what we were looking for. I want to say that last year’s car was very good, but we managed to improve it a little bit. I think that first of all the car makes a more pleasant impression at low speeds.

But overall, when I got behind the wheel of the RB20, I didn’t feel like I was driving a different car, and that was nice. But the team did an excellent job and all calculations made during aerodynamic studies and the use of computer modeling technologies were confirmed. This indicates that the team has worked very effectively in recent years.