Verstappen on ... overtaking
You mentioned your driving improvements and overtaking skills earlier, and you’ve made some really standout passes so far this year. Does that come from just your braking feel? I know you’ve practiced moves on games but what else has helped?
“In the end I practice it on games but it’s not like I play it just for that. I’m with this team [RedLine] on simracing and then we go testing on the track always together. Sometimes you find each other and you start to overtake and then just by fun you start to do those things. So it’s not just that I am focused on that.
“It’s all about feeling. You see a gap and then you can calculate if you can do it or not. So it’s all about your feeling and your perception of if you can do it.”
You’ve had a number of strong, clean moves in the latter half of the season but you had the crash in Monaco. Do you feel you have learned from that?
“Oh for sure. That all has to do with experience too. I didn’t know how much you lose in terms of downforce because it’s all new for me in F1, and after that I think I learned a lot and from there on all my moves went quite smoothly. Of course in Spa on that last lap [against Kimi Raikkonen] you try to but in front of us was Felipe [Massa] on really old tyres. So if he wasn't there I would have done the job but those things happen. At least you try, I mean if you stay behind you’ll always regret it.”
Do you feel now drivers know they’ve got a fight on their hands when they see you closing in behind them?
“I hope so! I don’t know, I don’t speak to them about that but I hope they do! It’s always good. I always like overtaking; hopefully on this track we don’t need to do that much because we should start higher up but we’ll see. I’m very happy about how the overtaking is going because it’s not easy with an F1 car as well because it’s high top speeds and then trying to find the right braking points as well without locking.”
