Red Bull made a solid performance in the Spanish Grand prix with third place for Max Verstappen and fifth for Daniel Ricciardo.
Verstappen was fifth on the starting grid and really needed a clean race
“I always feel quite good on this track and this race has been a nice turning point after the first few races where it hasn’t gone to plan. To come back and get on the podium is really nice. The car behaved really well all race on both soft and medium tyres. It felt balanced and had good pace so I was confident I could push on and achieve a good result. We lost a bit too much time at the beginning behind Kimi [Raikkonen] and it would have been hard to overtake him. We got a bit lucky with him having the problem and therefore allowing us to get an extra place and increase our speed”, Verstappen explained.
“After that, I could settle down and concentrate on my own race. I saw Sebastian [Vettel] approaching but I knew I had relatively fresh tyres so it would be hard for him to overtake, this allowed me to manage the situation quite well. I had some damage to the front wing which luckily didn’t affect the performance too much. The piece fell off and it only meant a small amount of oversteer so I was able to keep a solid pace and bring it home in third place. We were quick here in the last sector which is all low-speed corners so looking ahead to Monaco we can hope for a good result. We will concentrate on the set-up, get a good balance and hopefully put ourselves in with a real chance.”
Max Verstappen claimed his first podium of the season in Barcelona
Despite THIS tag with Lance Stroll as the VSC ended ?#F1 ?? #SpanishGP pic.twitter.com/Q7rsWqMSVH
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 13, 2018
Ricciardo said it was “certainly a strange race” for him
“At the beginning, we had good pace and it seemed like Kimi was a bit slower than Max and myself. I thought I was faster than them but then once they picked up the pace I wasn’t really able to go with them. When we pitted for the medium tyre we came out in traffic and lost some rhythm. I also had a spin on the VSC re-start, struggling to keep heat in the tyres, which really put me out of the race. Fortunately, there were no walls but it put me in no-man’s land”, the Australian commented.
“There were moments where the car was really fast but it was just too difficult to get it every lap. I would set the fastest lap and then the next lap I would nearly spin. There is potential but it’s just hard to extract consistently at the moment, so we have some more to learn with this new package. In the end, it was a pretty boring race but I’m going to take some positives from the potential we have. Monaco should be our strongest circuit to date on raw pace so I’m looking forward to getting there in a few weeks.”
Going for a spin under Virtual Safety Car conditions? ?
We won’t tell, Daniel Ricciardo ?#SpanishGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/hIuqJVmuga
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 13, 2018
