Baku F1, Verstappen sees the glass half full: “No weekend, but the points…”

Verstappen, the bad moment continues

The fifth place finish and the three points lost to rival Lando Norris are a Overall positive result for Max Verstappen. In fact, the world champion was only seventh with two laps to go in the Azerbaijan GP in Baku and only recovered two positions thanks to the accident between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz. A lacklustre performance very similar to the one already shown two Sundays ago in Monza, when the Dutchman had crossed the finish line in sixth position on a Red Bull fourth force on track. This time, however, the general assessments on the health of the RB20 are improved a little by the Checo’s encouraging performancewho until his retirement had been fully in the fight for the podium throughout the race.

Change of setup on his Red Bull

Although Helmut Marko was quite cutting on the team’s chances of overtaking McLaren at the top of the Constructors’ standings, in fact Verstappen and Red Bull can start again from Perez’s excellent weekend.Yes, obviously for me. – explained Max in the interview ring after the checkered flag – It was a bad weekend and a bad race too. Honestly, I didn’t feel comfortable in qualifying because the last adjustments we made to the setup didn’t work the way we expected and we paid the price for this mistake. Probably the problem was this because looking at Checo he did a much better GP than me”.

Positive aspects: Perez and the drivers’ standings

“Perez – continued Verstappen – he had much more confidence in driving the car while I tried something different on the set-up before qualifying and unfortunately it didn’t go as we expected. But that’s okay, you win and you lose together. We are a team. Obviously I’m not happy with the performance we showed on track, but on the other hand sometimes it happens that the last change to the set-up allows you to put the right cards together and it works great. This time it wasn’t like that, but in any case even if the weekend wasn’t positive for me, I didn’t lose many points.. So, I take this positively knowing that we can do much better. At least we’ll try next time.”.

The post-GP investigation mystery

The final comment instead concerns the yellow of the investigation for the overtakings made after the finish line, but still under the Virtual Safety Car regime due to the accident between Perez and Sainz. A maneuver that cost him an official warning from the judges: “I didn’t do any overtaking in VSC, but only after crossing the finish line. I mean, there are many examples of cases from the past and also this year where I did exactly the same thing (and I didn’t take any penalties, ed.). So yeah, I was a little surprised to be under investigation.”.