Max Verstappen continued his excellent start to the 2024 F1 season as he took victory to make it 2/2 in Sprints this year.
The Dutchman had to get his elbows out at the start as Charles Leclerc got away slightly better on his new mediums versus Verstappen’s used ones. As it is a Sprint, it was not worth the risk for the Monegasque driver to send it and potentially cause a collision.
After that, things settled down at the front as a Safety Car appeared to clear Lando Norris’ stricken McLaren.
“Yeah, I think my engagement wasn’t good in the start.
“So then, of course, I had to squeeze him a bit. Luckily everything worked out in turn one. Then, of course, we had the Safety Car just to calm things down a little bit.”
At the restart, Verstappen eased the gap out to just over a second from Leclerc as the top 2 gapped the rest with Ricciardo pulling off heroics to hold off Sainz and Piastri — he also fended off Perez for long enough to ensure the Mexican would do no better than P3.
In the end the three-time World Champion won by 3.3s over the Ferrari driver as he opened the gap up in the closing laps.
Nonetheless, Verstappen was not fully happy with the balance of his car and says work needs to be done with Parc Fermé opening ahead of Grand Prix qualifying.
“But after that we could steadily increase the gap a little bit. But it wasn’t entirely perfect.
“So we still have a bit of work to do, at least now with the new format. We can still fine tune the car a little bit.
“So hopefully we can improve it a little bit for later on in qualifying and especially for tomorrow in the race. But a win it’s good, I’m happy with that.
“And it gives us a good few points to look at as well to improve. Yeah, points are always nice to add to the card.”
The 26-year-old came through from P4 in Shanghai to win the Sprint by almost 14s. It was quite a bit trickier on Saturday afternoon in Miami.
“Yeah, China felt really good. I mean, the car was really, really nice to drive.
“Here, it was a bit more difficult for me. So there are a few more things to improve.”
