Max Verstappen celebrated his third win of the Formula One season with a win at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday, then immediately sought to put his Red Bull team on hold with reliability issues.
The Dutchman has won all three races he has completed this season but failed to finish in Bahrain and Australia due to fuel issues.
Hydraulic problems and a problem with the rear brake limited Verstappen to a handful of laps in Friday’s opening practice session in Miami, giving him little information on the track ahead of Saturday’s qualifying, where he finished third on the grid .
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In Sunday’s race he was able to quickly get past Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, and then in the ninth lap overtook Charles Leclerc, who had started in pole and took the lead.
“It’s a great comeback. I haven’t even had a [practice] Get started, so I didn’t know what to expect in the actual start. But we had a great launch, and I saw an opportunity to hang out [of Sainz] In turn 1, I tried. Luckily it worked out,” he said.
Although the Dutchman was clearly happy with the 23rd victory of his career in F1, he was eager to remind his team that they needed to step up their game.
“I had a lot of issues on Friday, which compromises your weekend and especially (qualification) yesterday. Everything went well with the start today, but it could have been reversed.
“So we have to end the weekend really positive without issues,” he said.
“At Imola we had that, but it’s still a bit hit and miss a lot. So we just have to make sure we’re more reliable and more on top of things. But as you can see the car It’s fast and I’m very happy with it. I mean, if we’re going to be slow and reliable, that’s probably not a good thing either.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said Verstappen’s teammate Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez had a problem with his car that hindered his attempt to reach the podium.
“We had a sensor problem on Cheeco’s engine, people did well to drive him around but he probably lost 30 horsepower,” he said.
“He was losing half a second a lap, without it he could have been second. With the advantage of the tires as we pitched him, he had the advantage of a grip on the Ferrari.”
The Red Bull chief, with his team confident for the future, finished just six points behind Ferrari in the constructors’ championship and Verstappen 19 points behind Leclerc in the drivers’ standings.
“The car is going fine. We hope some development coming later in the summer will help too, we need to save a little weight but in general we are on a good trajectory,” he said.
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