F1 News
"Verstappen knows that Red Bull and Honda invest a lot of money in him"
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing showed last Sunday that they still have a long way to go against Mercedes. Their dominance was broken thanks to a clever strategic decision by Red Bull to start on the hard tire. According to Robert Doornbos, Verstappen also proved to be a real team leader.
"Max just showed balls this weekend," says the Rotterdammer in his column for Ziggo Sport. "He is team leader and knows that Red Bull and Honda invest a lot of money in him. The whole team works for him and he has proven several times that he has the talent, but the material was not enough. Yesterday that was another story, the car of Red Bull was unprecedentedly good on that hard tire".
Good lap times not only thanks to car
Nevertheless, Doornbos does not only want to give the RB16 credit for this result. "The lap times he [Verstappen] drove on that white tire were really impressive. The term 'tire whisperer' really suits him. You can see that in the way he turn in. It's one steering motion and he just did great."
According to Doornbos, the fact that Red Bull's car behaved calmly now, while that was certainly not the case in previous races, is due to the composition of the tyres that Pirelli had brought along for this weekend. As a result, the RB16 suddenly found grip that is normally not there.