Max Verstappen: “The cars are pretty strong”

Published on 04 June 2015 by Mike Motilall

For the third time this season, Max Verstappen was present at the FIA’s official press conference, at the eve of a Grand Prix-weekend. Max took a seat among his peers: Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Sergio Perez, Pastor Maldonado and Daniil Kvyat. The press was gathered to pose some questions to the six of them.

When asked what the drivers do when they hear a safety car is on track, Max answers: “It depends on where you are on track, where you qualified. It also depends on how hard the track is for the tyres. All those things you take into account before you make a decision and you also talk to your team quite a lot because they have a lot of data and they see where you are on the track compared to other competitors. For sure, here in Canada it will be an interesting race for me. I will have to hope for a safety car.”

Not too long afterwards, Max gets asked what he thought of his performance in Monaco and what he learned from his crash. “The cars are pretty strong”, Max answers cheekily. “I’m happy… I didn’t have any problems after that, I went go-karting on Wednesday, so I was fit again. Yeah, I will have some work to do on this track, but I think it will not change me as a racing driver. I will keep fighting and especially when you want to fight for points, I will still go for it.”

Later on, when the press gets a chance to directly ask the drivers some questions, Massa is asked whether he will stick to his comments on Max, regarding the dangers of inexperienced drivers on track.“First of all, I said when I had the interview after the race, he was not penalised and they asked me what I thought and I said ‘I think he needs to be penalised because what he did was wrong.’ So that’s what I said and I think, especially when you’re in your first year, 17-years old and if you do something like that and you’re not penalised, it’s completely wrong. I think the FIA needs to be strong in a proper way which is what they did actually, that’s the only thing I said and I don’t change my mind.”

Max retorts: “Well, everybody can have their opinion, that’s the first thing but I looked at my data, I didn’t brake any later. I braked later in the race before that but on the lap I crashed, it was exactly the same lap as the lap before and I got my penalty. I’m focusing on Canada right now and maybe you (Massa) should review the race from last year and see what happened there.”

On if he knew why he got penalized, Max says: “Well, you know I have my own view when we discussed it with the team. I don’t think there’s any reason to look back at Monaco. Like I said we are going to focus on the race here in and we’ll try to score some points again. I will not change my driving style.”

An Argentinian reporter pops the question if Max had expected his team mate at Toro Rosso, Carlos Sainz, to perform as well as he is doing now. Max concludes with: “He’s a very good driver, he won Formula Renault 3.5 last year and so he was doing a good job. We are pushing  eachother forward and that’s also something that’s very good for the team.”

Tomorrow it’s lights out in Canada for the first two free practices for the Canadian GP.

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