'Monza has never been good to us', warns Verstappen
Max Verstappen is heading into this weekend's Italian Grand Prix aiming to take his fifth consecutive victory of...
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Max Verstappen is heading into this weekend's Italian Grand Prix aiming to take his fifth consecutive victory of the season, with the Red Bull driver in the form of his life as he marches to his second world championship in a row.
But despite his current dominance on the track, Verstappen is wary about his chances at Monza, which has not been a happy hunting ground for him in the past.
He has never finished on the podium at Formula 1's legendary Temple of Speed, and last year crashed out on lap 25 after colliding with his title rival Lewis Hamilton.
This year he's hoping for better fortunes in Ferrari's backyard - but he's not confident that he can overcome the jinx that always seems to hit the team at this iconic venue.
“I like to stand on the podium everywhere but also this track has never been good to us," he told the media on Thursday during the regular driver press conferences.
"We just never really had that top speed," he commented. "Of course on some tracks you can compensate with a lower wing, but here everyone tries low-downforce so you’re just stuck with it.
"That’s why I think in the last few years we’ve just never really been competitive here," he suggested. "Plus this was always a track where we always had to take engine penalties and stuff, which also never really helps.
"This year we have a good chance, and if you look at our car throughout the season we’ve always been good on the straights."
As for why the team seems to be unstoppable at this point in the season, Verstappen suggested that it was down to changes that had been made to the RB18 since the start of the new season when new regulations came into effect.
“At the beginning of the year with the car being overweight by quite a bit, I think it didn’t help the balance of the car,” he said. “But with that coming down, the last few races especially have been really good to us.
"Now we understand how to perform at every single track, some a bit more than others," he added.
His recent run of back-to-back successes contributing to a total of ten GP wins means that Verstappen now has a thumping 109 point lead in the drivers championship over Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez as he closes in on this year's title.
But Verstappen doesn't plan on take his foot off the gas just yet, and insists that despite the huge lead it's still not a done deal with seven races remaining in the current campaign.
"In terms of the points haul it’s been really good, but we know there’s still a lot of races left where we need to score points as well," he said.
Verstappen enjoyed his most dominant outing so far in the Belgium Grand Prix at Spa-francorchamps, which also saw his Red Bull team mate Sergio Perez take second place.
As a result of their two drivers' efforts, Red Bull is now 135 points in the lead of the constructors standings, followed by Ferrari and Mercedes.
“I will hope that we have a similar pace to what we showed at Spa, that would be good," said the Mexican today. "But I believe that this track is a little bit different to Belgium – certainly the weather will be!
"It will be interesting to see how we are able to perform," he added. "For example, Mercedes was strong last weekend [at Zandvoort] especially with the tyre deg. So it will be an interesting one this Sunday."
Perez agreed that Red Bull had been doing well when it came to tyre degradation this season, especially compared to their Ferrari rivals Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
“We’ve got quite an efficient car in that regard," he acknowledged. "And yes, we’ve seen in Spa - hopefully in Monza again - that we tend to like more of the lower-downforce wings.
"The car seems to perform better when we run with the smaller rear wings so hopefully that will be a good thing again here.
“As I say, it’s going to be very different conditions so we are also curious to see how we are able to cope.”
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