Red Bull’s Max Verstappen says the team could not have finished any higher at Formula 1’s Spanish Grand Prix after classifying a distant second to Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen lined up from third on the grid but pounced at the start to demote Valtteri Bottas, and kept within a couple of seconds of race leader Hamilton during the early stages of the first stint.
But as the stint wore on Hamilton pulled clear and once the duo had cycled through their respective pit stop phases Verstappen had already been cut adrift of the Mercedes driver.
However Verstappen had enough in hand to keep Bottas at bay as he finished second for the third time in four rounds.
“I mean the start was okay and then I could get into the tow of Lewis, so I could get past Valtteri into Turn 1 and from there I tried to follow Lewis a bit,” he said.
“Of course initially it was just managing tyres so I tried to back out of it as well but of course Valtteri’s got back into P3 so you can’t drop back too much.
“Then as soon as Lewis started to push a bit more I couldn’t follow the same pace, and yeah he just drove off.
“From then onwards I just tried to do my own pace and do the fastest strategy that we could do, and stay out of Valtteri and that worked out quite well today so I’m happy about that.
“We split the two Mercedes cars again so I don’t think there is much more I can do at the moment.”
Verstappen also explained the reasoning behind his frustrated radio messages prior to his first pit stop.
“I wanted to pit, and they didn’t call me in,” he said. “I was massively struggling on the tyres and I lost quite a lot of lap time over the last two laps.
“I already said on the radio I don’t care if you put me out behind the Racing Points because I will pass them easily because we’re a lot faster, especially on new tyres, so that was the conversation.”
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