Max Verstappen finished second in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, with a superb drive from the back row of the grid – but had to grapple with some issues on his Red Bull along the way.
The Dutchman was forced to start from the back of the field after taking a fresh PU for his RB22, handing him a seismic task to complete.
But there was no doubt a mouthwatering prospect for fans, that he could be capable of completing a recovery drive of some sort, and that was exactly what he did.
Up into the top 10 within a handful of laps, Verstappen used all his experience and extra grunt from the new PU to execute an impressive yet typical performance in the predictably unpredictable Brazilian weather.
His drive earned him second place, gracing the podium with race-winner Lando Norris and teammate Isack Hadjar.
Max Verstappen needs ‘understanding’ for Red Bull problem in São Paulo
But despite the magnitude of his performance, Verstappen revealed after the race that after his first tyre change, the performance of the RB22 had not been as fluid as it was prior.
“Yeah, I mean, when you start that far back, you need to try and get by the guys ahead of you as quickly as you can,” he said, when asked if he’d enjoyed himself on his overtaking spree.
“I do think that first stint went really, really well. We got very quickly back into the top 10, and I think the pace wasn’t bad. But as soon as I switched to the slicks, I had an extreme amount of oversteer in the car in the high-speed corners, which made it super difficult to drive.
“So, we need to understand if something broke on the car, some kind of aero loss or whatever, because this was not normal.
” I sit here, of course, very happy with second, but at the same time, I know there was more in it if the car had been in good shape. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I actually did most of the race with a car that was not in good shape, and to finish second, of course, is fantastic.”
Verstappen concluded: “Maybe next year I’d love to start a bit further up front instead of starting from the back or the pit lane, but we’ll find out next year. It’s been good.
“In the wet, it probably also gives you a few more opportunities to get by cars. You can do some different lines and have more opportunities, so that definitely helped me today.
“But we also have to understand why or what went wrong with the car as soon as we went to the slick tyres, because even when I switched back to the Inter tyres at the end, the car was night and day different to my first stint, which shows that there is something wrong.”
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