Verstappen Names Emilia Romagna Grand Prix His Best Performance This Year
F1Monday, 20 May 2024 at 14:00
Max Verstappen, who won the fifth Grand Prix of the 2024 season at Imola Circuit, named last weekend's race his best performance this year.
Despite a very challenging Friday race weekend start, when Red Bull seemed far behind McLaren, Ferrari, and maybe even Mercedes, the Austrian team with Max Verstappen managed to recover.
The triple World Champion first put together a miracle lap in qualifying to equal Ayrton Senna's record of the most consecutive pole positions, and then he went on to win the race by less than a second ahead of Lando Norris.
The Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was very challenging for all the drivers, as everyone struggled with tire management. Verstappen first created a more than six-second gap on Norris during his first stint.
However, he lost it all in the last ten laps as he slid around on the hard compound tires. The Dutchman was also one strike from a five-second penalty for the track limits, which meant he could afford no mistake.
With the McLaren driver putting immense pressure from behind, Verstappen yet again showed his mastery. For the final couple of laps, he went without a single mistake to bring home his team's fifth win of the season by the tiniest of margins.
Asked whether he would name the 2024 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix his best race, the Flying Dutchman told the media at Imola Circuit:
"I would say definitely this year in terms of how we managed to just, you know, turn things around. I mean, in general this year, of course, we had a really good car so far."
"But, yeah, for whatever reason, we didn't get on top of things from the start. I do think, of course, from yesterday qualifying onwards, it all looked a bit more normal."
The 26-year-old driver and his team managed to overcome multiple obstacles to bring home another valuable victory, but Verstappen warns they need to improve, as rivals are clearly starting to catch up.
"But maybe we were not on top of things for the race still, because on the Hard tyres, for sure, something was not optimized, because I just never felt like the tyres were working on our car. So that's something that we have to analyze."
"But clearly the teams around us, you know, they are catching up and they're doing a really good job. So we also need to try and find improvements, you know, from our side."
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