Formula 1 is a simple sport, 20 man race for 305 kilometres, and in the end Verstappen wins. This paraphrase of Gary Lineker’s famous quote seems all too applicable on Formula 1 these days. Even when there is an interesting race because the high tyre wear, the Dutchman makes winning a Grand Prix look like a walk in the park.
“I think it was a very, very good win,” Verstappen reflected on his race. “It took a few laps to settle in a bit with the car, but I think we made some good changes to the car before going into qualifying, which then helped, you know, today.
“So, yeah, basically after the first stint, some tiny adjustments were made to the car and that helped me then to feel even more comfortable and whenever I needed to go faster, I could.
“Whenever I needed to look after my tyres, I could. That’s always a very nice feeling to have once you’re driving. Medium tyres, Hard tyres… Possibly the Hard tyres felt a bit better, but overall, on both sides, I think we were very competitive.”
He and his engineer Giampiero Lambiase had a tiny squabble when Lambiase came back at Verstappen with “I don’t want to say I told you so,” but according to the reigning World Champion there was not much in it.
“We had, well, not an argument, but he was like, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ I’m like, ‘yeah, I’m pretty sure’. Turned out to be wrong. So he was right,” Verstappen laughed about the little back-and-forth the two had about the setup of the RB20.
“But in a way, it also fires me up, because I’m like, OK, well, even I’m not entirely happy with the balance now, I’ll still try to be as consistent as I can be without shouting back at him. But we have a great relationship. And yeah, it works well like that.”
The 57-times race winner had his doubts about his race pace after qualifying yesterday, but he remained quite tight-lipped on the race-winning changes they made in the setup.
“I mean, you always look at things that you can do better, but I think overall the biggest change is that we did change the car around and that then just gave me more grip.
He added: “Yeah, I think in general, of course, everything is a little bit more difficult [the higher temperatures]. When it gets warmer, you have a bit less grip. So I think the first few laps you’re really trying to adapt to that.
“So, yeah, I think overall it worked out, of course, well for us. But, yeah, it’s always a bit more tricky when suddenly the whole weekend you’ve done a certain temperature and then suddenly it goes up a bit.”
After the DNF in Melbourne Verstappen didn’t want to go as far to say this victory was a relief, but he was certainly content with the win at Honda’s home soil.
“I mean, not a relief, it’s just nice to win, and it’s nice, of course, to win here in Japan. It’s always an important race for us. You know, the fans, of course, we have a lot of support here, and it’s great, you know, to win here in front of Honda, and basically have three cars in the points as well.
“So, yeah, of course, Melbourne felt like a bit of a hiccup but what we did today, that’s what we want to do, and that’s what we aim to do every single weekend.”
