Here's the thing: sitting second in the drivers' standings after the rocky road Red Bull endured early on is, in the words of Max Verstappen himself, a big surprise. The four-time World Champion had to wait five rounds just to sniff a podium, and a grueling 16 events passed before he finally climbed back onto the top step.
Yet, a relentless wave of consistency following the summer break has dragged the Dutchman up to P2, where he currently holds a slim advantage over none other than Lewis Hamilton. Ahead of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Verstappen made no secret of how improbable this turnaround felt during those miserable opening months when the machine simply refused to behave.
With shifts or whatever that you hear me complain about, it’s just because I'm never satisfied because I think certain things can be better and I always try to fine tune or find improvements,
"It's a big surprise to be second, to be honest, in the championship, but we take it," Verstappen said. "I think we had a lot of difficulties as a team in the beginning. You know, the car was not where we wanted it to be."
Getting here required throwing everything at the development battle. Verstappen pointed out that they had plenty to learn regarding the power unit, but the team's refusal to drop their heads made all the difference. Even when stuck scrapping in the midfield and fighting for a humbling P6 or P7, the driver insisted he never settled, wring every last ounce of performance out of a recalcitrant beast until the upgrades finally arrived and dragged the car back into a winning window.
Of course, progress hasn't meant absolute perfection. Recent weekends have still brought their share of friction, notably with radio communications and downshifts that sparked typical vocal frustration over the airwaves. But Verstappen brushed those heated moments aside with a grin, explaining that his endless demands for fine-tuning are just part of chasing every final millisecond of lap time.
"With shifts or whatever that you hear me complain about, it’s just because I'm never satisfied because I think certain things can be better and I always try to fine tune or find improvements," he said. "If you hear it as complaining, it's more for me to make sure that the team is always looking into details to try and find more lap time because I know there is more lap time in it."
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