Red Bull want to fight for the title says Verstappen

Max Verstappen says that Red Bull are aiming to be in the title fight in 2020, taking a step forward from 2019 where the team were marginally off the pace of Ferrari and Mercedes more often than not.

Max Verstappen took three wins and six other podium finishes on his way to third place in the 2019 championship standings. Finishing behind only the two Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, Verstappen equaled the total victories of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc combined.

Despite these statistics seemingly showing that the Red Bull was superior to the Ferrari in 2019, Verstappen's superior championship standing came largely due to his relentless consistency and mistakes made on the Ferrari pit wall.

Two retirements and only four further finishes outside of the top four, none of these coming outside of the points paying positions, kept the Dutchman in championship contention for longer than was expected by most.

“I do briefly look back, but not for too long. It was a good year, during which we made some progress," said Verstappen via Verstappen.nl. "I see that as a natural process, because you get more experienced. 2019 was positive, but now we want to make the next step.”

"As a team we want to be able to fight for the title. We want to do well. Time will tell, because at this moment it is very difficult to say where we stand compared to the competition. But of course we are doing everything to take that step forward. We are on the right track.”

“I always want to keep improving myself. It is never 100% perfect. You will never have a season that is completely perfect, but you try to get as close as possible. We will do our best to be better in 2020. We want to be able to fight for the title. I hope that we can go for a podium every race this year. Hopefully things will get excited on track. I am up for it and looking forward to it!”

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