Max Verstappen has played down Mercedes’ level of progression after taking a dominating victory in Sunday’s 2023 Spanish Grand Prix.
Mercedes, who brought a new upgrade package for the Monaco GP, secured their first double podium of 2023 in Barcelona, with Lewis Hamilton second and George Russell third.
However, both were over 20 seconds adrift of Verstappen, who cruised to his fifth win of 2023 and his third at Barcelona.
“I think they had a very strong race, to be honest, they’re improving,” Verstappen told select members of the press, including Total-Motorsport.com. “But from our side, it’s not about being worried we just have to focus on ourselves.
“At the moment, it all looks great, but you can’t stand still in this world. [We’ll] keep on trying to find things on the car [and] try [to] understand why the hard [tyre] wasn’t working with the car.
“We’ll see what happens in the coming races. I don’t know if there are going to be tracks that are better or worse [for us].”
Enjoying good period of form
Verstappen, who took his first Formula 1 victory at Barcelona in 2016, never looked like he would be challenged during the race leading every lap despite receiving a black-white flag for track limits infringements.
Barcelona marked Verstappen’s 40th F1 victory putting him one win away from matching Ayrton Senna’s win record and making him the sixth most successful GP driver to date.
“It’s a good period,” said Verstappen. “But you know, we have to keep on working and trying to find more performance. The last few weekends have been positive for me.
This is one weekend where I think it went really well. But we also know maybe some other tracks, it’s not like this.
“So a lot of races to come where we, again, have to perform really well to try and win the race.”
