Max Verstappen has emphasised that Red Bull cannot afford to rest on its laurels despite his dominant display at Formula 1’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Verstappen topped each practice session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and went on to take pole position by almost half a second without needing to complete a final push lap in Q3.
Verstappen led every lap of the race, and collected the fastest lap, to take his fifth victory from seven starts in 2023, extending his championship lead to 53 points.
“We just have to focus on ourselves, trying to keep on improving the car,” said Verstappen.
“At the moment it all looks great but you can’t’ stand still in this world. We just keep trying to find things on the car, try to learn – like understand why the Hard [tyre] wasn’t working with the car.
“We’ll see what happens in the coming races. I don’t know if there are going to be tracks that are better or worse. We’ll find out.”
Verstappen conceded surprise at the extend of his issues on the hardest of the three compound tyres.
“It was a worse Medium, to be on the same kind of deg, and it was just sliding a lot more,” he said.
“And once I felt that, you just have to do your laps on it. Then of course, luckily we had another pit stop but it was definitely not the most enjoyable stint I’ve ever done in my life – but luckily the car is still fast, so you don’t really lose time.
“I didn’t expect that with this Hard compound but sometimes you have these surprises. Like I said, it wasn’t as enjoyable and probably a little bit harder to drive.”
