Max Verstappen opposed the growing expectations as a result of his dominant victory at the Italian Grand Prix, saying that Red Bull is not suddenly competitive at all venues.
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McLaren had earned each of the last five races at a comfortable margin, but only the reliability issues of Zandvoort’s Lando Norris prevented its ride, including five one-two. At Monza, where Red Bull struggled a year ago, Verstappen took pole position and delivered a dominant drive to win over 19 seconds, but he says his performance won’t lead to the rest of the track this season.
“I think it’s still a bit of a track reliance on,” Verstappen said. “There’s a lower downforce here. Our car always seems a little more competitive when it comes to low to medium downforce.
“So it’s not like we’re all coming back all of a sudden, we can’t compete every weekend, but the positive is that we seem to understand a little more that we need to do in the car to be more competitive.
While Red Bull has brought updated floors to Monza, Verstappen sees it as a change in the engineering approach that has unleashed more performance in recent weeks.
“We’ve had a lot of races where we were shooting left and right in the car setup, like a very extreme change,” he said.
“I think it really works because Laurent (Mekies, Mekies, the principal of the team) who has an engineering background, asks the engineers the right questions, and so they ask common sense questions.
“I think I felt like I took a step that already seemed to work well at Zandvoort, and here is another step that made me feel a little better.
“Previously, I felt like you were a passenger in the car. There were some races that weren’t balanced. And finally, there was more balance in the car, and the tires worked a little better.”
While being supported by the results, Verstappen felt his victory margin was exaggerated by McLaren’s strategy, and he began to lose his tire performance earlier than the chasing pair.
“I think it was probably a little better than I expected, but once I got back to the lead, I just tried to focus on my own pace and it went well,” he said. “I’d say I’d just do the last six or eight laps of that (first) stint, but it was good up until then. The car had done a little more of what I liked.
“This weekend is another step forward in car action and it seems we are showing it in the race, and I think that was a huge positive for us.
“We’ve created a little more normal strategy. Of course, McLaren was trying to try and gamble for safety cars, which is why I think the gap is a little bigger than it should have been.”
