Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

Verstappen 'overwhelmed' by best F1 finish

Max Verstappen says he was "overwhelmed" at the end of the Hungarian Grand Prix after finishing in fourth place.

The Toro Rosso rookie took advantage of a chaotic race at the Hungaroring to secure the best result of his short F1 career to date, with only Sebastian Vettel and the two Red Bulls ahead of him. Verstappen admits he thought he had blown his chance of strong points after colliding with Valtteri Bottas but was stunned when told of his track position late on.

“I’m incredibly happy, to finish P4 is an incredible result," Verstappen said. "It was quite tough, especially as my start was quite bad but then I kept focused, I didn’t give up at all and I was hunting the people down in front of me.

"I think my second stint was quite good, then a lot of people in front of me were touching each other - I even had a touch with Bottas which destroyed my front wing. I said ‘OK from here my race is over’. But at one point I asked my engineer for which position are we racing and he said P4. I couldn't believe it.

"I was so happy and even after the finish line I couldn’t express my feelings because I was really overwhelmed.”

With the next race not until the end of August in Belgium, Verstappen says he doesn't want a break after such a strong result.

“I feel very motivated for the next race, I’m not really looking forward to the holidays! I’ll hopefully do some go-karting and keep having some fun.”

REPORT: Vettel wins chaotic Hungarian Grand Prix from Kvyat

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.