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Red Bull wanted to keep Verstappen in pit box: 'But he wanted to drive'
Max Verstappen is happy with his RB19 this weekend. The car does what the Dutchman wants and so there was decent dominance in qualifying for the Spanish GP. In fact, the Dutchman could have been at least two tenths faster, he told GPblog afterwards .
"From the first lap it felt really good with the car. Of course you have to build it up over the weekend. If you have a lot of confidence in the car and the balance, then you can really go to the limit on this circuit," Verstappen said afterwards in the square in front of the Dutch media present, including GPblog.
The Red Bull Racing driver had been quite relaxed all weekend. On Friday, for instance, he heard Helmut Marko's phone ringing over the team radio. "I think I can always hear that, sometimes you don't have that much in it to listen to. But if the balance is good in the car, you can joke about that," he said.
Final lap in Q3 or not?
In his first run, Verstappen was almost nine tenths faster than Lewis Hamilton, the number two at the time. Red Bull actually wanted to keep their driver inside, but at his own request, the 25-year-old Dutchman was sent out anyway.
"The team first said I would not drive, but I wanted to drive myself, because I knew there was more in it. In the end, they did say we would go out and they would let us know if anyone went faster. In the end, nobody went faster," said Verstappen, who was still two tenths under his time at Turn 10.
Whether a time in the 1:11 range would have been possible? "If I had a better corner 10 exit and [in] corner 12 there was also some time, I might have just managed a 1:11," said Verstappen, who posted a 1:12.272.