Verstappen: "The positive thing is that the car runs smoothly"

The current Formula 1 world champion, Max Verstappen, said goodbye to the last day of pre-season testing with the fourth fastest time of the day, behind the Mercedes drivers and his teammate Sergio Pérez, yes, his time was with a harder tire and his morning session was affected by five red flags.

Despite everything, the Dutch driver was one of those who accumulated the most kilometers throughout the three days, also escaping from possible problems, which the Mexican driver did suffer due to a fault in the gearbox of the new Red Bull RB18 .

After the last day of testing, Max Verstappen shared his first sensations and acknowledged that he was quite satisfied with what he had seen so far, although he acknowledged that it is still too early to talk about performance and differences between the teams.

“It’s hard to say, but I think the most positive thing is that the car is running smoothly and I’m happy with the balance. But in the Bahrain test and also in the first race, the cars will be different. So I just I focus on doing a lot of laps and trying to understand every aspect of the car,” said the Red Bull Racing driver.

While some drivers have stayed away from extremely heavy cars, for Verstappen that is not a problem: “Of course in general the weight has gone up, but I really enjoyed driving the car. It has quite a stable balance and I think from the outside They look great too.”

In reference to whether the performance of the new RB18 was as expected or not, the Dutch driver did not want to get wet about it and explained that the real differences will not be known until the Bahrain Grand Prix that will open the 2022 Formula 1 season: “I don’t know I haven’t really paid attention to lap times yet, we’ll look at that in Q3 in Bahrain.”

Finally, Verstappen was positive about the objective of the new rules, which is none other than equalizing the performance between the cars: “Let’s wait and see what happens in the first race because only then will we really see everyone with the same tyres, the same fuel and the same conditions. But yeah, I think it’s a step forward overall.”