Verstappen wins the Spanish GP

We executed everything really well today and I am really pleased to win here in Barcelona. I managed to get ahead in lap two, which ultimately made my race, and the Team did a great job as we were aggressive with the strategy and made all of the right calls. After we overtook and led the race we had to take quite a defensive strategy and really push to the end. We lacked a bit of pace and McLaren were better on the tyres than us today, so that is something that we need to look at and aim to improve on. I needed to try and push a bit more as Lando was pushing full out behind to try to catch me. We need to ultimately maximise our performance and manage the tyres as best we can. That said, it was great to bring it home with a win and as a Team we operated really well today. We were really strong, didn’t make any mistakes and the Team also achieved the fastest pit stop this year too, which was great to see. So a strong weekend overall!

We struggled a little bit with the pace today and it was super hard to pass anyone on that first stint, especially in the dirty air, I was managing my tyres and in a DRS train. I think that ultimately compromised our race and we had some balance issues on the soft tyre, which made things harder than predicted. We switched to a three-stop strategy and that meant we managed to save, what I believed was the maximum today, given our starting position. Our Saturday was the main problem, and I am pretty disappointed because we haven’t been able to maximise the potential in the car this weekend, at least on my side, I think Max did a tremendous job today to come away with the win. I have made good learnings this weekend for the coming weeks, I am hopeful we can be more competitive and come back strong in Austria. I need to help deliver perfect weekends for the Team because it is going to be a very competitive season.

It’s obviously disappointing finishing in P15, but I’m happy with my race and how we managed it as a team with the two stops. I think yesterday I just missed a touch in qualifying, but honestly, today I feel like I maximised it with a good race. We managed the tyres and pushed when we needed to, so unfortunately, I think we just didn’t have more to show this weekend. There’s certainly lots to learn from weekends like this. We take a few little positives and a few more things to work on because we seem to be missing something with the new package. It’s a quick turnaround, so we’ll work on it tonight, trying to understand more in preparation for Austria next week.

It was a tough race, in which I struggled. The handling of the car was definitely not easy, and I did not feel as comfortable as I normally do. Something wasn’t quite right, and we’ll analyse everything that happened to understand what did not work well and come back stronger in Austria.