Max Verstappen is uncertain whether he can fight at the front at the F1 US GP, as track conditions and car behaviour will differ from those at previous circuits.
As F1 gears up for the US GP this upcoming weekend, Max Verstappen jokes that the bumpy Circuit of the Americas might force him to “order a new spine”. The Dutchman has already paid attention to the track conditions during WEC and explained that, from the looks of it, COTA was “incredibly bumpy”, raising concerns for the US GP.
The four-time World Champion finally secured his first victory of the F1 season at the Bahrain GP in Malaysia before making it a back-to-back win in Singapore. Despite plenty of challenges with the RB22, Verstappen has prevailed and delivered some strong performances.
Speaking about the upcoming US GP, the Dutchman remained uncertain if he will be in the fight at the front.
“I mean, it’s very difficult to say. I don’t want to say now that I will be in the fight in Austin, but yeah, the last few weekends have been great,” Verstappen said.
“But I just take it race by race, and once we are in Austin, then we’ll see how it will go there. But it’s again a very different track. From what I saw in WEC, the track is incredibly bumpy. Oh my god, I probably need to order a new spine after the weekend, or become like Robocop. Crazy.”
While the bumpy circuit is expected to be a challenge for everyone, the behaviour and reliability of the RB22 come as an additional challenge for the Milton Keynes-based team. With Verstappen reporting various issues throughout the season and teammate Isack Hadjar suffering recent power unit and gearbox failures, the team hopes to bounce back stronger in Austin.
“That’s again a new challenge for everyone, you know, to deal with those bumps. And then we just go from there. We have to go to Mexico, again, high altitude, everything will run super hot.
“We need to see how the engine is going to perform at that altitude, how the car is behaving, because it’s very different. So, you know, there are so many different things that you can get right or wrong in those races, but we’ll see.”
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