Max Verstappen reckons the RB19 is more to his liking after improvements everywhere, as he looks for Red Bull to minimise the mistakes.
After a record number of wins last season, it would be impossible to bet against the Dutchman winning a third title going into 2023 season. Red Bull put on an impressive performances in Bahrain pre-season testing with both Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez topping the time sheets.
After last season’s dominant performance in the RB18, Verstappen heaped praise on the RB19 where he notes that the car has improved ‘everywhere’. The balance is good for the Dutchman despite losing some performance after the floor changes due to porpoising.
“Everywhere,” remarked Verstappen when asked about where the RB19 has improved from RB18. “That’s the aim. I mean, you always strive to improve it. It feels nice. Well balanced, of course. Every team, of course, lost a bit of performance with the floor”.
“But you always tried to gain that back, in a way. So you have to, of course, find a bit of a new balance of the car. But it’s been good.” Champion in 2021, it was a sluggish beginning to 2022 but once they got in the groove, in a nutshell, there was no stopping them.
Verstappen feels, however, that this season they are better prepared because they have had a season to deal with the new rules introduced in 2022. The biggest change for Red Bull has been the weight loss which helped them immensely last year and will do in 2023.
The RB19 is a touch lighter, with weight extracted from the car, one would reckon that the champions would possibly have to chance his style of driving by adjusting to same but it has been seamless for Verstappen. In fact, the car is much more to what he likes.
“Yeah, 100%,” continued Verstappen. “But our car was a bit fat last year so naturally, it’s in a much better window and what you have learned throughout the whole year, last year, I think, gives you a much better understanding of the car”.
“Sure, that naturally makes it better but that doesn’t mean that we are satisfied. I think we’re never satisfied, you always want to do better and we want to put improvements on the car, which we will do. Mainly the weight was the issue in the beginning of last year”.
“I think throughout the year last year that improved already a lot. So this car, for sure, has a few different things on it but from the start, it felt much more to what I liked, of course so at the end of last year,” summed up Verstappen.
Last season, their focal challengers were Ferrari but they faded out and a remarkable run of consistency saw Mercedes almost snatch second place from them. While the latter doesn’t seem to be a threat to mount a challenge, there are question marks on the former.
Additionally, Aston Martin have been impressive too in testing. But at the end of the day, Red Bull seem to be in a league of their own and Verstappen respects that there are other teams at the sharp end even though he knows where they are.
And that’s why he is looking for no mistakes from Red Bull this year. “Of course, the teams close to us [remain our challengers],” he said. “But also, I think, at the end of the day, from ourselves, because we have to stay on top of things and we cannot afford to make too many mistakes. I mean, we’re not robots, everyone makes mistakes, but you tried to minimise it.”
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