Max Verstappen said Red Bull need to show more pace at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix than they did in Barcelona as they face rising pressure from rivals McLaren.
The reigning world champion has won seven of the 10 grands prix so far this year. But he hasn’t taken pole position in any of the last three rounds, despite tying George Russell’s pole-winning time at the Canadian Grand Prix.
He said Red Bull improved their pace from a low starting point in practice at the Circuit de Catalunya but needed to find more.
“In Barcelona, we had just a normal weekend, we were just too slow,” said Verstappen. “Then you try to keep on making adjustments, and then luckily, in qualifying, it all felt a bit better. But that was probably just a normal progression that you have throughout the weekend.”
Red Bull can’t afford a repeat of the problems the experienced at some rounds earlier in the season, he added.
“Before that, of course, we had some messy weekends. So we cannot afford that anymore, these kind of things. So I just hope for a clean weekend, basically like we did in Barcelona, but hopefully a little bit more pace as well.”
Lando Norris beat Verstappen to pole position by two-hundredths of a second in Spain. Verstappen won the race after getting ahead of the McLaren driver at the start, but expects Red Bull’s rivals to be a consistent threat across different tracks.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
“McLaren, at the moment, they’re just very solid,” he said. “They’re good everywhere, every single track, kind of.
“Also, I think you could see in Barcelona, they were very good on their tyres. They could just push more on them compared to, I think, everyone else on the grid without actually [degrading] that much at the end of stints.
“Even the last stint, my last few laps were quite a struggle, where Lando was definitely catching up a lot. So these are things that we have to do better. Plus, of course, our known issues with the kerbs and bumps, low speed, basically. Those are things that we try to understand better also for next year.”
Red Bull fitted Verstappen’s fourth different power unit of the season in Spain, meaning he will incur a grid penalty if further new parts have to be fitted before the end of the year. He said he is still waiting word from Honda on whether they can salvage a unit which failed during the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.
“At the time, it was not looking great – not…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…