Max Verstappen has given his verdict on Red Bull’s new upgrades for the Austrian Grand Prix, describing them as “a bit better”.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Dutchman was in contention for pole position at Red Bull’s home race and was provisionally third on the grid following the opening runs in the final part of qualifying.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
On his second lap, the four-time world champion looked set to improve before suddenly crashing at the penultimate corner.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Verstappen’s RB22 suddenly snapped away from him as he entered the corner, with Isack Hadjar suggesting there may have been an issue with the straight-line mode.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In the end, Verstappen qualified fifth but believes the upgrades were, overall, a step in the right direction.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Asked how the upgrades performed, Verstappen told select media, including RacingNews365: “Most of the upgrade worked well. A few things still need to be looked at to see if they can be improved.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Overall, I do think it was a bit better. But of course, this is a very short lap, so in terms of lap times, the gaps are always a bit tighter. We\u2019ll have to wait and see how things look in the upcoming races.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The difficulty in judging the performance of upgrades at the Red Bull Ring lies in just how short the circuit is, with a lap taking only 66 seconds to complete.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As a result, Verstappen still feels Red Bull is behind, pinpointing Mercedes in particular as having an advantage over his team.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It didn\u2019t feel bad,” added Verstappen. “But the fact is, of course, that you\u2019re still a bit behind. In that regard, we haven\u2019t closed the gap that much yet.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“If you compare it to Barcelona, too\u2014it\u2019s a short lap here. I do think Mercedes was very strong in the fast corners. That\u2019s where you\u2019re still falling a bit short.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen has given his verdict on Red Bull’s new upgrades for the Austrian Grand Prix, describing them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3518,3521,3519,3522,3520,3517,3515,3513,3516,3514,111,139,69,3512,213],"class_list":["post-499586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}