Max Verstappen isn’t getting distracted by Red Bull being dubbed as the clear favourites or any potential rival.
Max Verstappen’s focus purely on Red Bull not rivals
Max Verstappen has insisted his focus remains purely on Red Bull’s exploits despite Ferrari’s strong pace in pre-season testing.
Red Bull looked strong across the test in Bahrain but failed to set the quickest time of the three days, with that honour having gone to Carlos Sainz on the second day.
Max Verstappen drove for Red Bull during the entire opening day of testing and set the quickest time on that day before he got back behind the wheel of the RB20 in the final afternoon session of the test on Friday.
His focus was entirely on long-run pace, yet he still ended the final day just over four-tenths of a second behind Charles Leclerc, who topped the final day. Verstappen’s performance was ominous, as his best lap was set on the C3s, whilst Leclerc’s was set on the softer C4s.
But Ferrari’s pace and reliability across the test has thrust them into the early running for pole position in the opening race of the season and asked about the Scuderia’s performance, Verstappen told media including RacingNews365: “I don’t really think about that.
“I just look at what we’re doing here. There’s always a lot of work to do, you always want to do better.
“But I think we had a very positive test and we learned a lot from every single thing that we changed on the car. We also know what we want to do for next week and that’s what we’ll focus on.”
‘I trust everyone’
Despite dominating with the RB19 last season, Red Bull hasn’t stood still when it comes to the design philosophy and that can be seen in the changes made with the new RB20.
“I trust everyone in the team that they know what they’re doing,” insisted Verstappen.
“So I don’t care how they design the cars as long as it’s faster.
“Of course, it’s quite interesting what they come up with every single time and yeah, it looks nice. But I’m not an engineer, I’m here to do my job in the car, and they are here to do their job, building the car and preparing it.
“I think so far everything that we hoped for… it worked very well and that’s always a little bit of a question mark when you get to the real track, but I have to say the last few years, I think that has been a good strength of ours.”
