No 'relief'
“Am I relieved to have won here in Honda's home race? No, it's not a relief, it's just nice to win here in Japan, which is a very important event for us in front of all the Japanese public. Having three cars scoring points overall is a great result. Melbourne was like a hiccup, what we did here in Suzuka is what we will try to do every weekend.”. As Max Verstappen in the press conference he focused on the performance in Japan – pole position, victory and fastest lap in the race – two weeks after the technical knockout in Australia which put an end to a streak of nine consecutive victories between 2023 and 2024 for the three-time world champion .
Now the Grand Prix is on the horizon China on a track similar to that of Suzuka in terms of design, Red Bull will once again appear as the underdogs, but the Sprint weekend could reserve some surprises with only one free practice session before the Sprint Qualifying (the Park Closed, however, this year it will remain open after the Sprint until before the Qualifying as happens on normal weekends).
Verstappen underlined that the aim of making the RB20 more 'urban' than the RB19 everything will be to be discovered starting from the Miami GP where the graining factor that affected Red Bull already in Australia could return: “The RB20 has improved in low-speed corners – explained Verstappen – but street circuits don't just have low speed corners as a feature. We will have to verify the behavior of the car when passing over curbs, in absorbing dips and bumps. We have not yet been able to verify these aspects and therefore we cannot now talk about improvements. We have to wait and see how it goes.”
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