Austrian sprint race winner Max Verstappen says he expects the Ferrari drivers to challenge him in the grand prix tomorrow.
Verstappen led every lap of the sprint race but was pressured at the start by Carlos Sainz, who tried a pass into turn three.
“It was alright, I think a decent race, we had good pace at the beginning and I think after that we were very closely matched,” said Verstappen, reflecting on the challenge from the Ferraris. “It was good, like a sprint should go, quite flat out.”
He said that he was able to pull away early on in the race, partly due to a back-and-forth fight between Sainz and team mate Charles Leclerc. However, Verstappen does not expect the same to hold for Sunday’s grand prix.
“It was just the first few laps, of course they were also fighting a little bit so I had a little bit of a gap and after that we were quite similar in pace,” Verstappen said.
“So I do expect tomorrow it’s going to be a very interesting battle again. Of course the race tomorrow is going to be quite a lot longer so it’s going to be quite tricky on tyres.”
Verstappen, Sainz and Leclerc all ran the sprint race on medium compound tyres, which Sainz said he had failed to save enough of towards the end of the race.
“It was good fun, like it should be, racing but then [I] overheated probably a bit the tyres running behind Charles, I had to back off a bit to recover them and finish the race,” admitted the Ferrari driver.
Verstappen said he was optimistic about repeating his performance in the grand prix, however. “The car is good, just a few things to fine tune but overall we’ve been really competitive again this weekend.”
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2022 Austrian Grand Prix
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