Max Verstappen said his only concern during the Chinese Grand Prix was the debris he ran over at the end of the race.
The Red Bull driver was in control of proceedings throughout, despite two mid-race appearances by the Safety Car. He said his RB20 “felt amazing” on the way to his fourth win of the season.“All weekend we were incredibly quick,” said Verstappen. “It’s just enjoyable to drive, every single compound as well.
“The restarts, I think we all survived that well and the car was basically on rails and I could do whatever I wanted to with it. Those kind of weekends are amazing to feel and to achieve basically what we did this weekend is fantastic.”
Verstappen asked his team to check his car in the final laps of the race after running over the broken front-left end plate left by Zhou Guanyu after his collision with Kevin Magnussen. He said that reminded him of past occasions where his car has let him down at the end of a race.
“You hear always noises, a little bit,” he said. “Of course I’ve had it in the past that I’ve retired quite close to the end.
“There was a bit of debris, I think, from a car, so I passed it [at] 300 [kph] and you know when the tyres are getting cold and old, it’s very easy to puncture them and I just wanted to double-check.”
His team mate Sergio Perez finished third, behind Lando Norris, after losing a position to the McLaren driver and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in the pits.
“It really cost us quite a bit,” said Perez. “Unfortunately we got the Safety Car, we lost two places. We did most of the race on the hard and was just fighting like that, in the early laps then the life of the tyre just goes off dramatically.
“But at least we managed to get to the podium, but it wouldn’t have been good one and two.”
Perez admitted he was “definitely lacking some pace, especially on the medium compound” compared to Verstappen. “We did struggle quite a bit with the balance.
“We changed a lot from yesterday to today. I think we didn’t read the conditions as perfectly as we could, but overall I think it was a strong weekend and we understand the reasons why today the race pace was a little bit down.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2024 Chinese Grand Prix
- Mercedes cleared over Hamilton pit stop infraction as ‘nearly all teams in breach’
- Aston Martin petitions FIA to review Alonso’s penalty for Sainz collision
- “You need to be more on it”: 12 unheard radio exchanges from the Chinese GP
- Ricciardo needs to show “head-turning form” for 2025 chance – Horner
- With fourth format change in as many years, F1 relegated sprint races to a sideshow
