Verstappen took pole within the first seven races of 2024, however has no longer recorded a pole place for the reason that Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. And after shedding out to Norris in qualifying in Spain earlier than solely narrowly beating his good friend and rival within the race, Verstappen was beneficiant in his reward of what McLaren are at the moment reaching on observe.
“I at all times knew that it was going to be very shut,” mentioned Verstappen after the Barcelona race. “And McLaren is simply doing a extremely, actually good job. They’ve introduced plenty of good updates to their automotive, and it actually simply appears to work. And from our facet, we have now introduced issues to the automotive, however most likely not as a lot lap time as what others have been bringing to their automotive.
READ MORE: Norris claims he ‘ought to have received’ Spanish GP after tardy race begin ‘ruined all the pieces’
“So now it is as much as us to attempt to discover a bit extra, attempt to get that little leap forward once more. As a result of I believe clearly at the moment, we simply lacked a little bit of that outright tempo, but additionally simply once we needed to push, we simply could not take care of the tyres like Lando, for instance, may.
“So these form of issues are fairly essential on many of the tracks the place you might have a little bit of deg [degradation]. So yeah, we have to attempt to be higher on that.”
Regardless of McLaren’s sturdy latest kind, Ferrari stay forward of them in P2 within the constructors’ championship, whereas leaders Crimson Bull are a full 93 factors away from the Woking staff.