Verstappen praises Red Bull for last-minute setup tweaks

After struggling for the ideal car balance, reigning world champion Max Verstappen has praised Red Bull for making perfect last-minute changes to the setup to his RB20.

Max Verstappen got a tough start to his weekend at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Although he was not required to hand over his car to a rookie driver in FP1, he lost valuable track time during Friday after engine issues forced him to sit out the majority of the second ninety-minute session.

Despite the limited track time, the Dutch driver looked fairly competitive in the third and final practice session, and Red Bull managed to fine-tune his car for the all-important qualifying by making several tweaks to the setup.

The championship leader revealed that he had expected a difficult qualifying session, but the setup changes have made his RB20 “more driveable” which allowed him to push his car to the limit.

“Today was a good recovery here in Mexico. Starting the day we knew that it was going to be difficult with no data from Friday, so FP3 was really important for us to make sure we had some references heading in to the weekend.

“We knew it was going to be a difficult session, we missed crucial running time yesterday, and the track was still very green when I first went out today. I just tried to do the best I can and we made some final changes in the right direction.

“The changes that we made, the car was more driveable, and I was able to push more. To be on the front row for tomorrow is better than expected and a great result for us. Tomorrow is a bit of an unknown, but we will give it our all in front of the fans,” concluded Verstappen.