Verstappen: Where we will be in Austria depends from Ferrari!
Max Verstappen says that Red Bull will end up fourth or fifth in the home race because of lack of pace, but adds that their performance also depends of the team from Maranella.
The first driver of Milton Keynes team does not have a good feeling for the upcoming weekend at Spielberg because he is aware that his team has a lot of work to raise their pace and reduce the backlog for the teams ahead.
The Dutchman is good driving this season, and he takes advantage of every opportunity he can afford. He did something similar to last race (France), but could not follow the dominant Mercedes as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Verstappen fears that despite the fact that Honda has brought a new engine to Paul Ricard, Red Bull will not be able to catch Mercedes and Ferrari without mistakes from any Red Bull Racing team this weekend.
“We will probably end up in fourth or fifth place, although it depends on whether Ferrari will make mistakes,” – Max says.
“Maybe even the third if both from Ferrari make mistakes! At this point we miss the pace, but you have to accept it. Meanwhile, we continue to work hard on the car and mostly on the engine.”
“You can see that Ferrari and Mercedes made another step forward and Renault also. I think our (progress) was not good enough so we have a job.”
Verstappen smashed radio links in France and the ‘magic pedal of gas’ during the race. He highlighted this as a reference in which he could not match the time of the circuit set by the drivers in front of him, which made him unable to fight for the podium.
“My team has constantly talked about Mercedes and Ferrari and their times. But I really told them I could not do it any faster. I was trying everything I could.”
