Red Bull did not miss chance to win Australian GP, says Verstappen · RaceFans

Max Verstappen is certain Red Bull did not miss an opportunity to win the Australian Grand Prix, after finishing the race a close second.

He briefly took the lead of the race when eventual winner Lando Norris pitted before him during a rain shower to switch from slicks to intermediate tyres. Verstappen eventually did the same and rejoined the track back behind the McLaren driver.

After the race Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Verstappen there was nothing the team could have done to get him ahead of Norris. “Even if we’d stopped a lap earlier on those slicks we still wouldn’t have got track position so it was worth a gamble,” he said.

Verstappen said the team did the right thing by trying to vary their strategy from McLaren’s at that point in the race.

“We tried something else, it was about to work out, but I can’t see the radar, of course, of how the weather is moving in,” he told the official F1 channel.

“But even if we would have pitted with them a lap later or the lap that I pitted, it would have always been P2 anyway. So it didn’t really matter, but it was fun to try and do something different.”

He moved up to second place immediately after the start by passing Oscar Piastri, who started second. However when the rain first fell Verstappen ran wide at turn 11, losing the position to Piastri, then fell around 10 seconds behind the McLaren drivers until the rain eased again.

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“The start was fun,” he said. “After that, I think I tried to stay with the McLarens but like basically every other team we just degged too hard and we overheated our tyres and then the McLarens just take off.

“I gave it my all, but then of course at one point, they really just took off and I tried to just focus on my own race. But then, of course, the weather just started to play up again and it was very difficult out there with the slicks when it started to rain.”

Verstappen believes McLaren’s pace in dry conditions shows they will be hard to beat in next weekend’s race as well. “The gap is big, I know that,” he said. “That is not going to disappear from here to the next race.

“But we have to try and stay close. Also on days like today, normally you are P3, we are P2, so that’s good.”