1 week Ago By Jack McEachen
Max Verstappen claims that he would have been out of sight if he was driving the McLaren car at Suzuka, in a very clear dig at Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri . The Red Bull man surprised the entire paddock to take pole position, only to fend off the two previous race winners for glory in Japan. The RB21 vehicle has proven problematic, with Liam Lawson and then Yuki Tsunoda struggling to drive it successfully.
Verstappen has made several complaints about its unreliability, but proved why he is considered one of the sport’s finest drivers by taking it to the chequered flag first. He was able to expertly navigate the dirty air on track, low tyre wear and cooler temperatures to finish ahead of Norris and Piastri. Afterwards, he aimed a dig at the pair by insisting that the gap would have been even greater if he had the McLaren car at their disposal.
"I'm very happy with what I'm doing,” Verstappen told Viaplay. “I don't even want to think about it if I'd been in that other car [ McLaren ]. Then you wouldn't have seen me.
"When I came here, I didn't expect to win here at all - and after Friday, not at all. Starting on pole was the most important thing this weekend. McLaren I think was faster, but they couldn't get into the DRS to make a move.
" At the end of FP3 on Friday, Norris topped the timecharts and was followed by Piastri, while Verstappen came in fifth - behind George Russell and Charles Leclerc . Entering qualifying, the Red Bull was not expected to compete with McLaren but Verstappen maximised his vehicle to produce a lap that was described as “insane” by engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. Over the team radio, Christian Horner hailed Verstappen’s run as “unbelievable”.
But speaking after his race win on Sunday, the four-time world champion was quick to credit what he believed was a team effort to unlock extra pace in the car. "In the end it's always a team that works well together, with GP [Lambiase] and this weekend I also had another performance engineer, Hugh Bird," he said. "I worked with him until the end of 2020 as well and that actually went really well.
"In the end, we made the right choices before we went into qualifying. If you listen to the onboards, it runs very smoothly between me and GP. Those are things that are very important though.
"This was a great result, but it was difficult to overtake and qualifying was very important here. This does not mean that everything is now suddenly hosanna and that we are going to win all the races, but we can be very happy with this.".
