After a tricky first four races of the 2018 season Max Verstappen managed to stay out of trouble during the Spanish Grand Prix and drive a faultless race that sent him on the podium. It is the 150th podium for Red Bull and Verstappen’s first podium of the season.
The car showed strong pace that helped on making the soft tyre completing almost half distance. Lap times improved after the pit stop as team switched to the medium tyre. Despite sustaining some damage in contact with the Williams of Lance Stroll under the Virtual Safety Car, the Dutchman had enough pace to maintain track position ahead of Sebastian Vettel and make the podium.
“I always feel quite good on this track and today 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", says Verstappen.
"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 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. After that I could settle down and concentrate on my own race.
"I saw Sebastian 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 setup, get a good balance and hopefully put ourselves in with a real chance.”
