(Motorsports news) Verstappen was able to make the most of his Red Bull equipment during the last two seasons, winning 34 races and dominating the 2022 and 2023 seasons while teammate Sergio Perez found it difficult to stay up with the car’s advancement and optimal setups. Following his struggles to stay up with former teammates Pierre Gasly and Alexander Albon, it was suggested that Verstappen is the focal point of the Red Bulls.
Speaking only to Motorsport.com, Verstappen, however, believes that news of his special driving technique is exaggerated, stating that, like everyone else, he must adjust to how the car must be driven at the limit. “When people ask you: ‘What is your driving style?’, I can’t tell you because it’s about being able to adapt to certain situations or what the car likes as well,” Verstappen stated.
“What am I in search of? More grip is what I want. You have a lot of desires, some of which are unattainable. I simply adjust to the car I’m given as a result.” Verstappen noted that the team merely aims to develop a faster car rather than only seek a desired balance, even if he is supposed to enjoy a car with a powerful front-end and has an amazing capacity to deal with an unstable rear-end as a trade-off.
“The team merely makes improvements to the car to make it faster throughout the year. Not to try and go in a certain direction for balance, or anything like that,” he continued. “All you get from upgrades is overall load and overall grip. I’m satisfied with the car’s behavior, although I have to adjust my driving if it becomes a little less responsive. Or it works in the same manner if it’s more erratic.
“It’s been alright, I believe. In certain races, you either oversteer or understeer more. In terms of balance, it fluctuates a lot and isn’t always accurate. You can’t run some tracks that way.” He shrugged when asked why Red Bull’s RB19 outperformed its competitors in the race compared to qualifying trim “I don’t know – I don’t think we do anything magical in the race.”
“We perform our typical offset. I believe that, if you understand what I mean, the other competitors are qualifying well but not doing well in the race. “You always look at the race performance, of course, but we also want to qualify quickly. Nothing strange happens when we just think about the race.”
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