Red Bull was able to prove that the performance in his car has unlocked different circuit types with his pace in the Grand Prix of Singapore, according to team head Laurent Mekies.
Max Verstappen was in the battle for the pole position and started in the front row in Singapore, while he stayed close to racing winner George Russell, while he also kept Lando Norris at a distance. When beating both McLarens on a high downforce circuit, Mekies says that Red Bull has proven his victories in the previous two races – at low downforce locations – not exclusively due to rail traits.
“Certainly for us, being able to fight for the victory here, this means a lot,” said Mekies. “After Monza, Baku, it was very different. You never know until you come to the high downforce tracks.
“So we were able to be in the right rhythms from Friday. We were in the right rhythm in qualifying – it was very, very close to the post – and we were in the right rhythm in the race. If you look, we ended up a few seconds removed from George.
“So this is good news. It means that what we have unlocked is not only low downforce -specific. We will not change our approach. We will continue to follow racing per race. We will continue to take the lessons.
“There are most likely quite a few lessons that we can make of this race, with even more small pieces of performance that we may be able to unlock in the future.
“I think Austin will be a very different comparison. It is back to the famous mid-speed corners, where McLaren was also very strong here, 5, turn 9, they have been very, very strong against us all weekend, and you have many of them in Austin and in Mexico. So we will take racing through race and then we will see.”
Despite the strong result, Verstappen was not entirely happy with dealing with his car during the race in Singapore, after he had gone for an aggressive strategy that he had defended him for the second half of the Grand Prix.
“In terms of individual problems for the race, I can’t tell you,” he said. “It was very difficult outside of it. We started with a soft band, we were one of the only cars in the top 10 … And we did that to make it clear to make our chance to get George in the beginning, but it did not happen. And I think it exposed us very quickly to more relegation, to have a more difficult car.
“As a result, we set up, very hard on the hard tires, managed to close the gap. But what it meant is that the majority of the race, Max had defended with older tires than his direct competition. So it is a choice for aggressiveness that we thought was necessary if we wanted to have a chance.
“So the good news is that he has done the great job to bring the car in second place despite the pressure of Lando. Now I think there is nevertheless behind that there are probably a few things that we should work on, things that disturb him during the race, but I would probably qualify them as something of a lower size.”
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