Max Verstappen said he was happy to finish second in the Miami Grand Prix on a “bad” day for him and Red Bull.
The championship leader was beaten to victory in Miami by McLaren’s Lando Norris after a fortunate Safety Car deployment allowed Norris to get ahead of him.
Verstappen struggled to match Norris’s pace on the hard tyres over the second half of the race and gradually fell back, finishing seven seconds behind Norris at the finish. Despite it being the first time Verstappen had finished a race in 2024 without winning it, Verstappen was content with the outcome.
“I mean, you win and you lose,” he said. “I think we’re all used to that in racing, right?
“Today was just a bit tricky. I think already on the mediums, it didn’t feel fantastic. We were pulling away, but not like it should be. Once we made the pit stop and I heard the lap times the McLarens were doing, I was like ‘wow, that’s pretty quick!’.
“Once I had switched onto the hard tyre, they just had more pace. And especially Lando, he was flying. It was incredibly difficult for us on that stint. But if a ‘bad’ day is P2, I’ll take it.”
Asked what he was struggling with in his car, Verstappen said he had a generally low level of grip across both of the car’s axels.
“Understeer, oversteer – just very low grip on four wheels,” he said. “That’s something that we have to understand.”
McLaren brought a significant upgrade package for their car to Miami, while Red Bull had only minor adjustments for their RB20. Verstappen believes that his team will have to work on their own car to regain a performance advantage over their rivals.
“I mean, they came with an upgrade,” he said. “For sure, it looks like it works, right? So we have a bit of work to do from our side.
“I think definitely it wasn’t our strongest weekend, in terms of race pace, but we’ll analyse it all and we’ll try to come back stronger.”
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2024 Miami Grand Prix
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