F1 | Max: “Nice victory, but there is room to improve the setup”

The first part of the weekend, the one dedicated to sprinting, ended with a pole and a victory for Max Verstappen, as in the simplest of predictions. Despite a less than memorable start at the start, the Dutchman maintained the lead of the race gained yesterday thanks to pole, immediately trying to extend it.

The intervention of the Safety Car during the first lap due to the contact at the start in the middle of the group between the two Aston Martins, Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris, with the latter forced to abandon the race, however canceled everything, forcing the Dutch to rebuild everything from scratch.

Although he was immediately able to pull back, extending his lead over Charles Leclerc, second behind him, right from the start Verstappen reported problems with poor grip, just like during the sprint qualifying. A problem linked above all to the management of the rear, which continued to slip, leading to the tire overheating: to try to remedy the situation, from the pits the engineer tried to suggest modifying some parameters to move the balance towards the front, but Verstappen clearly indicated that such a move would only definitively worsen the state of the front tires, which were already under strain.

“I think my start wasn’t very good, so I tried to close on the riders behind me a bit, but in turn one everything went well. Then of course there was the Safety Car which neutralized the race. We managed to increase the gap a little, but it wasn’t entirely perfect. So we still have some work to do,” Verstappen explained in interviews, before remarking that he is still not satisfied with the balance of the car.

With the latest changes to the format, the drivers will now have the opportunity to intervene on the cars again to modify the setup, taking advantage of the data acquired both during the sprint qualifying and in the short race: “Now, with the new sprint format, we can still tune up the machine. We hope to be able to improve it a little for qualifying and especially for tomorrow, in view of the race. But a victory is positive, I’m happy about it. And it also gives us some points to work on to improve.”

Despite the victory, today’s sprint gave different indications from that of China, which was totally dominated. As explained, Verstappen has not yet found a perfect feeling with the car and believes there is room to continue improving: “The sprint in China went very well. The car was really nice to drive. Here, however, it was a little more difficult for me, so there are still some things to improve.”