Max Verstappen says the 2023 F1 season went smooth as he didn’t have to do things over, but he admits that 2024 he had to go the extra mile.
It was a dominant show in 2023 for Red Bull and Verstappen. The Dutchman notes that he didn’t have to do as much because doing over wasn’t needed in the car they had and it may have led to working against them. The 2024 season, though, was a changed picture for them.
Even though they started well in dominant fashion, things started to drop back as the updates in Imola didn’t work. It needed extra mile not just from Red Bull, but also Verstappen had to dig deep. While they couldn’t secure the constructors’ championship, but they just managed to hang on the drivers’.
Verstappen had enough buffer and did enough in the low period to get that title. “I think in 2023, everything almost went by itself,” he said. “Of course, I did my work. I went to drive on the simulator. But when the car is in a very nice window, sometimes when you try to overstress things, it also doesn’t work when you try to look into too many details.
“That’s anyway how I never operated, trying to look into too many details, because it can also work against you. This year was a lot more difficult. Everyone was struggling to understand, of course, for me as well, I didn’t understand why we were where we were. So just asking questions, working together, looking at data, looking at analysis that came up after every single race we can.
“And of course, I’m not the engineer, I’m not going to tell them how to design a floor or whatever, a suspension. But I can ask questions, and then we discuss, and we go through what we can see from the data of the track, wind tunnels, CFD, all these things, simulator.
“And with all the smart heads in the team, you sit together and you just have an open discussion about things. And I explain my difficulties with the car. Of course, we do it here as well. We’re talking and we’re talking back to the factory. But it’s not eye to eye with,” summed up Verstappen.
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