Max Verstappen: “We did well as a team and it is of course a positive day for us”

Max Verstappen took victory in the Sprint race at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari on Saturday afternoon, coming out on top of a great battle with Charles Leclerc to secure the eight points on offer.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver had initially slipped behind the Scuderia Ferrari driver at the start and for much of the race shadowed his championship rival before closing the gap as tyre degradation began to play a part in proceedings.

Verstappen ultimately got within the DRS range and made a pass heading into turn one on the penultimate lap before pulling away from Leclerc to prevent the Monegasque racer from returning the favour on the final tour.  He eventually closed out the race almost three seconds clear.

“We did well as a team and it is of course a positive day for us,” said Verstappen. “I didn’t have the best start so we need to investigate what happened there but after that we had good race pace.

“Initially for the first 10 laps or so it seemed like the gap to Charles wasn’t really growing but then I think at one point the tyre degradation started to kick in a bit more and I could close the gap and I got ahead.”

Verstappen knows he cannot expect Sunday’s full-length Emilia Romagna Grand Prix to go the same way, so it will be important to remain focused and look to taking his second victory of the year.

“Tomorrow is a new day and there are no guarantees, I still expect it to be very close and I the battle tomorrow will be difficult,” he said.

“We are very focused on what is ahead and we hope to do a good job tomorrow.”

“We managed to minimise the damage from quali” – Sergio Pérez

Team-mate Sergio Pérez claimed the final spot on the podium in third, the Mexican having climbed from seventh on the grid to finish not far away from Leclerc in second.

Pérez was made to work hard in the opening laps to move up from his lowly grid slot, but he made good passes on Fernando Alonso, Kevin Magnussen, Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris to move into the top three, and ended the day charging up to the back of Leclerc.

“I am happy with the result of the sprint and looking forward to tomorrow starting from P3,” said Pérez. “We managed to minimise the damage from quali so I am happy with that, it was a nice save and it was all we needed for today, anything more would have been a bonus.

“I got a really strong start and after that I was just progressing through the field, it got a bit messy with Daniel when we touched, but overall it was a nice sprint for me and we got some good overtaking done.”

Pérez believes that he can fight for the win on Sunday at Imola, and although he expects Ferrari to be strong, he believes his team can fine tune his RB18 so he can truly be a contender up front.

“I think there is some fine tuning we can do for tomorrow and hopefully we are able to do it to be in the mix for the win, which is the target,” said the Mexican. “We certainly have good pace and I am looking to produce another solid weekend for the Team, hopefully we can come out on top against the Ferraris.

“We have seen in Melbourne and we have seen here already that it can change fairly quickly so either team can turn things around and we certainly expect the Ferraris to be strong.

“I got really close to Charles today near the end but it was just a sprint so let’s what we can do over race distance.”

Sergio Pérez ended third after starting seventh – Credit: Octane Photographic Ltd