Leclerc<\/a> for the duration.<\/p>\n\u201cOn the inters, we were naturally a bit faster because of the set up that we had on the car,\u201d said the Dutchman. \u201cIt was just very tough to pass. At one time, I was really close going into Eau Rouge, but you lose so much downforce when you are behind. The car becomes really unstable, so you couldn\u2019t really keep it on the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went onto the slick tyres and to be honest, every lap, I just felt that Charles was pulling away a little bit. Then he had one mistake where I think he lost about one-and-a-half seconds. That\u2019s why it looked like I was back in the fight, but realistically, I never really felt I was in that fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I always try to get into the fight, but today, partly because of the rear wing that we chose because we hardly did any wet laps in the end which generally, I think is a shame. I think we could have gone racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not ideal but the biggest problem is still how we keep our tyres alive in the race. We\u2019re just not strong enough on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sprint marked the first time that Verstappen had topped the F1 podium in any race since the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May.<\/p>\n
Asked for an overall assessment of the weekend, he added: \u201cIt\u2019s of course not where I want to be, but we are trying. Yesterday was a positive result for us, but it is not a realistic result, because we are way slower. But today, I tried.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll in all, with the decision making and the set up that we chose with the wing didn\u2019t help. But nevertheless, P3 was probably the maximum possible with the ideal scenario and, unfortunately, this didn\u2019t happen today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen conceded \u201cI never really felt I was in that fight\u201d after trailing P3 finisher Charles Leclerc…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-27130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}