Verstappen Highlights Vettel For Helping Red Bull Achieve Incredible Milestone

Saturday, 20 April 2024 at 14:30

During a post-qualifying press conference ahead of the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix, Max Verstappen discussed the milestone that his team reached during the weekend.

After an underwhelming Sprint Shootout result (P4) on Friday, the triple Red Bull Racing driver was all fired up to jump into his car and destroy the competition in the Sprint race.

Starting from P4, he went on to finish the Sprint 13.043 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton in second place in only 19 laps.

The 26-year-old then headed into the qualifying with an improved mood and gave his rivals no chance in the dry session at Shanghai International Circuit.

He scored the fastest lap in all three parts of the session, in the end beating everyone by more than 3 tenths of a second and scoring 100th pole position in the history of the Red Bull Racing team. He said:

"Before I jumped in the car Christian [Horner, Red Bull team boss] told me if you get pole today it could be number 100 for the team, so I was like, 'Okay, that's nice, I'll try and give it a good go.'"

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37 of the 100 pole positions were achieved by the Dutchman, 13 by Mark Webber, and three by Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo, respectively. The biggest contributor to this achievement was Sebastian Vettel, who scored 44 pole positions during his time at Red Bull.

"Of course that's an incredible achievement for the whole team. Also a big contribution from Seb back in the day! But it's fantastic also to have the one-two in qualifying, it showed that the car is again working really well."

Verstappen also became the first man in this century to consecutive pole positions in the first five races of the season. He added:

"From my side, it's been a really good start to the year, and I feel probably very confident in qualifying, even compared to last year."

"It's just a shame, of course, that we retired in Melbourne; otherwise, I think we could have had a very strong lead, but overall, it's still a great start."