Max Verstappen talks about his second win in F1 Emilia Romagna GP after a tricky drive, as Sergio Perez adds about the 1-2 finish.
Red Bull’s Verstappen was pleased with his win in F1 Emilia Romagna GP especially after the downer in Australian GP. The Dutchman stated that they needed a good weekend after that as he explained how his race panned out where they secured a 1-2 finish.
He noted how difficult it was in tricky conditions. “I mean, of course, Melbourne wasn’t great for us,” said Verstappen. “And the start of the season in general wasn’t amazing. So we needed a good weekend. I didn’t expect it to be like this, but of course, when you have a weekend, at the end of the day, like this, that’s incredible.
“I mean, a one-two for the team, but also maximum points scored. And also, the way I think we handled the race. We didn’t really make any mistakes, I think we made the right calls with switching from the inters to the slicks, and from there onwards we just controlled the race. And of course, it seemed probably easy on the TV, but you still have to be focused, especially also with backmarkers.
“It’s easy when you’re off-line to lock up or go through a wet patch and go off track. So yeah, just manage that. But the car was handling really well. Of course, we saw that yesterday already in Sprint Qualifying that we had good pace in the car. And we could look after our tyres probably quite nicely. So, yeah, a very positive weekend,” summed up Verstappen.
Regarding the start, the Dutchman noted of some changes made to the clutch after the slow start in the sprint race. “There were no fixes to the clutch, it was just we had a poor execution of procedures and I think we did a better job,” said Verstappen.
“I mean, there is still room for improvement but in the wet, it is a bit hit and miss. I mean, last year I had an amazing start here and in the wet these things are a bit more difficult to nail,” summed up Verstappen, as teammate Perez talked about his side and how he was defending hard from Charles Leclerc.
“It started really well with the start,” said Perez. “I think we both had a really good start. And it was just about making sure those inters lasted, because I could feel the deg coming. I tried to manage the tyre a little bit. But it didn’t make any difference. It still died towards the end. And really my race started there.
“And Charles was just pushing quite hard towards the end of all the stints, so we were racing always on to the stop. They were extremely quick through the chicane. I think that their low speed was quite good. And yeah, I mean, you saw with Charles he had the mistake there, so he was certainly pushing extremely hard through there and he was just taking quite a bit of time out of me at each lap.
“The race felt under control, pretty much towards the end of the race, but then he boxed and tried the undercut on us, so we did box again, and yeah, managing to make sure we didn’t have any mistakes. It was pretty challenging out there. It was so easy today to make a mistake. So to come away with a one-two, it’s great, a great team result,” summed up Perez.
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