When the Red Bull RB20 was unveiled at the team’s Milton Keynes headquarters earlier this year, there were two schools of thought. One was that the radical change in appearance suggested Red Bull had found something that would help it extend its advantage over the field, while the other was that the new concept would carry risk and potentially allow others to close in.
After the opening two races of the season in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, it was the former opinion that seemed to have legs. Verstappen had cruised to two comfortable victories from pole position, winn ing by over 25 seconds and 18s to the first non-Red Bull car respectively.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had already crowned Verstappen champion by the end of the fourth race weekend in Japan — where he bounced back from the retirement in Australia with another victory — having previously gone further and said the Dutchman could win every race after the season opener.
But Verstappen himself was having none of it. As Red Bull has faced increasing threats at many tracks — beaten by a quicker McLaren in Miami, nearly seeing that repeated in Imola and then pushed down to sixth place by Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes in Monaco — he has stayed calm. That’s all due to a mindset that was in place back on that launch day at the Red Bull factory.
“I would say last season was pretty incredible what we did as a team, and it will be pretty hard to replicate something like that,” Verstappen told RACER. “I always knew that, so I never went into this season thinking that, ‘Ah, let’s try and do even better than what we did last year,’ because that’s basically impossible.
“So I was always ready for the challenge, and naturally of course with the regulations that we have I think the cars are getting closer to each other, which is good for the sport. We just try to stay on top of things — we really try to improve our car, learn from the weak areas in the car as well — and I’m sure if we can get on top of that then we still have a very strong package.”
Heading into the Canadian Grand Prix, there was a lot of talk about the weaknesses of the RB20 when it comes to curb riding, and how the team was going to be under threat again. That proved true, with George Russell taking pole and Verstappen fending off both McLaren and Mercedes drivers, but ultimately emerging victorious.
Red Bull had still been leading both championships even prior to a big weekend in Montreal due to Ferrari’s failure to score, and given the focus there has been on the team’s form, Verstappen admits it’s strange the way expectations almost lead to criticism of the pace-setters.
“People very quickly get comfortable to a lot of success and then they almost expect you to keep on doing that same thing in a way,” he said. “But then in the back of their minds they don’t want you to do that. I don’t know, it’s a bit weird.
“From my side and the team’s side, we are just very focused on always trying to improve, trying to do better, but naturally the competition gets closer as well. They have strong weekends as well, but that’s fine.”
What was perhaps telling about the race in Canada was the way Verstappen and Red Bull handled a chaotic situation. It’s true that being put under more pressure can lead to a greater chance of mistakes, but at the same time this is a partnership that has grown used to winning for a number of years.
The opportunity to take another victory amid rain showers in Montreal was not a surprising position to be in, whereas the main challengers — Russell and Lando Norris — each have just one win to their names.
Although there have now been multiple times that either McLaren, Ferrari or Mercedes have offered a genuine threat for wins, Verstappen is less concerned about any areas the car needs improving. That’s not to say he doesn’t want to see gains coming from the team’s development program, but his main demand is to execute race weekends as effectively as possible.