Max Verstappen has suggested it is “looking promising” for Red Bull-Honda’s 2021 Formula 1 hopes but stressed he wants to “stay low key” and not outline any concrete ambitions.
Red Bull has been one of the main challengers to Mercedes in Formula 1’s hybrid era but has been unable to sustain a season-long title threat to the dominant marque.
Verstappen and Red Bull finished best-of-the-rest in their respective championships in 2020 but took only a pair of wins and one pole position across the 17-race campaign.
Mercedes, meanwhile, headed qualifying on 15 occasions and claimed 13 victories.
Formula 1’s regulations have undergone only minor revisions over the winter, mainly focused on floor changes in order to reduce downforce levels, ahead of 2022’s overhaul.
Verstappen drove Red Bull’s 2021-spec RB16B for the first time at Silverstone on Wednesday, pictures of which have not been released by the team, and addressed select media on Thursday.
Verstappen said the car “all felt normal to me” but that gleaning a definitive early impression was unwise due to the mandated use of Pirelli’s promotional tyres.
When asked what Red Bull and Honda needs to deliver for 2021 Verstappen quipped: “More grip, more power.
“People always talked about the rear-end being so twitchy, I think it’s just general grip we were lacking a bit.
“Also, we were a bit down on power. We know that – there’s no secret behind it, you can see it. So we worked a lot with Honda throughout the winter. It’s all looking promising but it doesn’t make sense now to hype it all up.
“I want to stay low-key and focus on our job. We should do the talking on the track, not next to the track.
“I am always very realistic and it makes no sense to talk about stuff now. We have to go to Bahrain and look at it there, at the first race, and see if we succeeded or not.
“We know where we want to be and where we want to get to and that’s what we now need to try and realise.”
World Champions Mercedes opted against bringing sizeable updates to its W11 only a handful of rounds into the delayed 2020 campaign while Red Bull extended its development path for far longer.
Verstappen, who claimed a pole/win double at the Abu Dhabi finale, is hopeful that Red Bull’s decision will enable it to close the deficit to Mercedes.
“I think at the end of the season Mercedes stopped developing that car from whenever, June or July, because you couldn’t really see a lot of updates,” he said.
“We just kept learning and we know we had a few issues with that car and we wanted to improve it.
“Also knowing the regulations wouldn’t change that much, obviously the floor changed a bit but in general the car stayed very much the same.
“For us it was important to get on top of that and let’s see this year if we improved it even more and we are even better and hopefully we can be more competitive compared to Mercedes.”
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