Verstappen shrugs off Sochi penalty setback

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Max Verstappen insists that he's not concerned by the grid penalties facing him and the rest of the Red Bull and Toro Rosso drivers this weekend at the Russian Grand Prix.

Verstappen, Alexander Albon and Pierre Gasly all face a five place demotion after receiving a new Spec 4 internal combustion engine from Honda for the race.

Daniil Kvyat will start from the back after receiving additional power unit components from the Japanese manufacturer.

But Verstappen is confident that it won't make a great deal of difference to him in Sochi, where he finished in fifth place last year after starting from the back of the grid.

All Honda-powered drivers set for grid penalties in Russia

“I don’t think it’s going to hurt us a lot around here," the Dutch driver told the official Formula 1 website on Thursday.

“Last year we started from the back and overtaking didn’t seem like a big problem around here,” he pointed out. "It’s not any more back of the grid, it’s only five places. That’s why I think we went for it.

“Maybe the midfield teams are a little bit more competitive this year, but it should be alright," he continued.

"You might lose a little bit of time to the guys ahead. But realistically speaking, I think you would anyway qualify fourth or fifth so it’s not going to change a lot."

Verstappen is hoping that Red Bull will be back on an equal footing with Ferrari this weekend, after not being able to match their rivals last time out.

"If you look at the history of Singapore they’ve always been competitive there," he insisted. "With the amount of power they have it makes it better and easier to go quick.

"But then if you look back to Monza you would expect them to be a second ahead of everyone, and they weren’t," he said. "So it’s very odd, sometimes, how it plays out

“It’s a bit weird, what went well in Monza and then what went wrong in Singapore.”

Verstappen suggested that Red Bull had simply gone in the wrong direction in Singapore, in part due to results from their simulator pointing them down the wrong path.

“There were little things with the simulator we could have done better," he said. “We went a different direction than the previous years, and it maybe didn’t work out like we wanted to.

“But at the end of the day, the simulator has helped us so much that one weekend where it didn’t work out can happen. Unfortunately it was Singapore. But we’ll look into everything to improve it for next year."

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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.