Max Verstappen faces the limits of his Red Bull in Sprint

The four-time world champion managed to climb onto the podium in the sprint race in China, without being really convinced by his single-seater which lacked pace and degraded its tires too quickly.

Published 22/03/2025 à 07:13

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Max Verstappen faces the limits of his Red Bull: "We didn't have the pace"

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If he doesn't win again, Max Verstappen is picking up points, race after race, and his third position in the Sprint of the Chinese GP allows him to come back to just two short lengths from Lando Norris, 8th in the race. Second on the starting grid, the four-time world champion got off to a good start, but Lewis Hamilton quickly closed the door on him.

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Despite an interesting pace in the first laps, Verstappen was never able to launch an attack on the Ferrari and eventually found himself under threat of McLaren byOscar piastri, who finally found the opening. "It's a positive result. I tried to go flat out because I also had Oscar behind me putting pressure on me, so I tried to stay within Lewis's DRS. explains Max Verstappen. It helps a lot on the back straight. But unfortunately, I would say in the last 8 to 10 laps, we just didn't have the pace of the others, so I was just trying to survive on track. So I'll gladly take this 3rd place. Even the cars behind were coming back quite hard, so it was difficult to manage the tires, but it's okay. We'll try to do better."

The Dutchman suffered, like some of his rivals, from significant tire degradation, which caused him to lose performance in the second half of the race and allowed Oscar Piastri to attack him. "I would say it started around halfway through the race." reveals the four-time world champion. “We really started to feel the degradation kicking in. Yeah, it felt a little bit more aggressive for us than the cars around us. But I think that maybe also came from the fact that we didn't have the base pace. You try to hang on and, naturally, you destroy your tires a little bit more. So, to be in the top three, I think it's still a good result for us. I mean, we started a little bit higher than we should have, so I'm pretty happy that we held on.”

Himself surprised to have qualified second for the Sprint race, Max Verstappen is aware that it will be difficult for him to do as well for the Grand Prix, but it is better never to underestimate the Batavian...

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