Mercedes faster in every corner - Verstappen

Max Verstappen says that his Red Bull RB15 is “not really better in any corner than Mercedes”, after a race in Barcelona which saw the Dutchman finish third behind the Silver Arrows.

Mercedes have had the best possible start to the season, as they have now scored five consecutive one-two finishes. No team has ever had a better start to a season.

Verstappen did manage to out-pace both Ferrari drivers around the Circuit de Catalunya to score what was his second podium of 2019, in an impressive drive which saw him earn driver of the day.

“We’re not really better in any corner than Mercedes,” he said. “It’s good, it’s not that it’s a bad car! But at the moment the Mercedes is just quicker than us everywhere.

“Medium-speed, high-speed is pretty similar but that depends a lot on the downforce levels you’re running every single weekend so it’s a bit difficult to say.

“On this track, they were very strong in the low-speed corners. And that is normally pretty good for Monaco [the next race] as well.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes that Mercedes have an advantage in the understanding of their 2019 challenger, as the team was fastest through the slower final sector in Spain.

“Mercedes have done a very good job in extracting performance from the car in that part of the circuit,” he said. “I think that we are not at our optimum yet in terms of where we’d like to be with these new regulations and construction of tyres.

“This weekend was a step forward and hopefully more will follow.”

However, Horner does believe that his team had the second fastest car at round five of the world championship: “I think Max’s first lap was outstanding,” said Horner.

“We had an aggressive [two-stop] strategy but we had the pace obviously to beat the Ferraris. Considering where we were in the pre-season test eight, nine weeks ago, I think to have caught that gap, to have got that performance on the car, is really encouraging.

“Obviously now we have to try and focus on diminishing the gap further to Mercedes.”