Max Verstappen explains why Chinese GP should be a cracker

Max Verstappen

Verstappen explains why Chinese GP should be a cracker

China wasn't so kind to him last year.

Matthew Scott

Saturday 6 April 2019 12:12

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Max Verstappen hopes the Chinese Grand Prix will offer him more opportunities to race, and overtake, having endured a quiet run to fourth place at the Bahrain GP last time out. Verstappen was unable to keep pace with Ferrari and Mercedes in Sakhir.

Verstappen finished ahead of Sebastian Vettel thanks to the German sustaining damage and spinning in battle with Lewis Hamilton and might have taken the final podium spot from Charles Leclerc if the race's climax were not neutralised by a safety car.

However, that belied Red Bull's true pace in the desert, with Verstappen almost a second adrift of Leclerc's pole time in qualifying, and racing a lonely race until Ferrari's day went wrong.

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Shanghai was a difficult venue for the Dutchman last year as incidents with Hamilton and Vettel cost him a likely race win, which team-mate Daniel Ricciardo took instead, but Verstappen will return to China with renewed confidence.

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He said: "The Chinese Grand Prix is always a good one for racing because the track gives you a lot of opportunities for overtaking, so I'm looking forward to hopefully having an exciting race there.

"The first sector is really nice because you can take a lot of different lines through the long right-hander so it can be quite interesting during the race in terms of trying to stay out of the dirty air.

"The track can also be quite hard on the left front tyre so in the race you're always looking at how you can use the least amount of energy in that corner.

"Overall, Shanghai provides you with a lot of opportunities to fight and set up overtakes like for example in turn six, where you're already preparing and setting up for that in Turn 1.

"We scored some good points and maximised the result in Bahrain but we still have a lot of things to learn about the car.

"We've been busy back at the factory and hopefully we can close the gap in China. This year in Shanghai is also the tenth anniversary of the team's first race win, so hopefully we can put on a good show, especially for the passionate fans there who always turn out."