2024-07-22 16:10:02
“Then again they leave me out [in the second round of stops] where I basically immediately got into traffic with backmarkers. And on a day where the car’s not the quickest, you need to try and capitalise on undercuts… You can’t rely on a little pace advantage.
“Maybe last year, yeah, with the car being quite a lot faster than everyone else. But I think in the position that we’re in now, we can’t do that anymore and I think that’s why today was a tough race for us.
“Naturally of course that frustrates me because I want things to be done better because of course I’m realistic – today, we couldn’t have beaten the McLarens but a P3 I think was on the cards if we would have just been on it a bit more.”
Asked what changes needed to be enacted at Red Bull, meanwhile, Verstappen replied: “We need to work. I mean, it’s not like suddenly next weekend [in Spa] we can have new upgrades on the car, so yeah, it is a problem.
“We know that we’re lacking compared to McLaren and it’s of course not nice, but we have to analyse our stuff, how we can improve our overall package currently. But I don’t think that’s something very easily done, you know? We’ll see next week how it will evolve, but at the moment, I think race pace, qualifying pace – we are behind [McLaren].”
