Red Bull gains key to China dominance - Verstappen

Max Verstappen says the catalyst for one of his most dominant performances of the season in the Chinese Grand Prix was the improvement in his car that Red Bull delivered over the weekend. The championship leader comfortably won the Sprint by 13 seconds from Lewis Hamilton, then followed that up with a dominant drive from pole position to beat Lando Norris in the grand prix. Verstappen admits it was one of his more emphatic wins of the season because of how the car felt, saying Red Bull evolved the setup to give him a better car come Sunday. “It was a good one,” Verstappen said. “In terms of just also balance in the car, we did a good job as a team to make it even better than what it was at the start of the weekend. “You never know when you enter the weekend, how it’s going to go fully. Sprint weekend, normally always a bit more chaotic. So you always want it to go really well. But then it did go really well! So then you are very pleased. “But also the performance I think now in the main race, I think the car was an improvement compared to the Sprint race even. So it just made my life a bit easier as well – it could be a little bit more consistent while driving. “This was definitely one that I wanted to win. I’ve been on the podium here, but I haven’t won here before, so that was great, for sure. I definitely just enjoyed the whole weekend. It’s been really nice with a great car. “Throughout the race, I mean, with the Safety Car and stuff, as always, things that you have to do well – the restarts and stuff – I guess they’re tense moments. The actual start, too. And after that, just a management race, looking after your tires, trying to extend the gap. So busy enough, but also enjoyable.” With the two safety car restarts to negotiate that also wiped out his advantage at the time, Verstappen insisted he was more disappointed because of the way it reduced the uncertainties in strategy and associated jeopardy for other positions. “It was not complicated it … Just took a long time, I found, to get the first car cleared,” he said. “Then I felt like we drove one more lap behind the Safety Car for nothing. So I was like, ‘Come on, speed up a bit’. Then we had another safety car and for me it felt, again, that they took a long time to clear, because you want to race, right? “Actually then I thought that because of the two Safety Cars it made it a little bit less fun, because you would have seen probably more different strategies between the cars. And now everyone was just driving more or less to the end, except I think Fernando was on a Soft. That made it a little bit more straightforward, so that was a bit of a shame.” Verstappen says there was little to concern him during the race itself, with one notable exception after fearing he had run over debris late on. “I locked up in the second restart into Turn 6 a little bit, so that was not ideal. Then I threw a tear-off away, which I think I could hear on the intake. It was flapping around hitting my helmet. So I don’t know where it ended up. “And with two laps ago, I think I drove over a little bit of debris before Turn 14. So that was a little bit scary, because with all the tires it’s easy to have a puncture at high speed when you drive over carbon.”