Max Verstappen admits McLaren’s “two cars” attack during the sprint in Austria meant he had to work for the victory, his team-mate Sergio Perez not in the fight.lined up on pole position at the Red Bull Ring ahead of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, while his Red Bull team-mate Perez was down in eighth place having qualified over a second off the pace.
The reigning World Champion held his nerve in the face of the McLaren pressure, easing his way out of DRS range to take the win by 4.6s. Perez wasn’t able to make up any positions and finished P8 where he was 17s down.“It was a good first lap I would say but once the DRS opens it is very hard to get out of it, took a few laps, a few exciting battles as well,” he said.
“But you could see they have two cars, are pushing flat out trying to of course make it difficult for me.“And you know, we had to work for it in that race so a few things to think about what we could do better for tomorrow especially because it’s going to be even longer races and harder on the tyres.He added: “I need to have a look at the whole race, I was very busy with myself. So we have to look into the data about the others as well. And we’ll see if we can do better tomorrow.
“It’s just because them in the DRS so they use of course a bit less energy because naturally they spend less time on the street just catching up to me.