Verstappen finally 'doing my own thing'

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Max Verstappen believes he's getting better and faster as the season goes on, as more time in the race seat allows him to settle in and get more out of the Red Bull car.

"The last few races I’ve been doing more of my own thing because you start to understand more of the car and which way you want to work to," he told reporters in Austin this week ahead of the US Grand Prix.

"Even there you’re experiencing new stuff, definitely you’re heading into the direction you want," he said, adding that he was no longer so reliant on taking direction from his team mate Daniel Ricciardo.

"When I first jumped in I took all the settings of Daniel of course – brake pedal, throttle pedal, steering wheel – all these kinds of settings, at one point you start to change them a bit to your liking, I think that’s what I’m doing at the moment."

Verstappen has also been the centre of attention over his driving style which has been criticised by other drivers since he switched to Red Bull from Toro Rosso following the Russian Grand Prix.

"I don’t think about it. I just do my race and from there on I’m just fighting for position so I think a lot of people would do the same."

He finished second at Suzuka, which he held on to after a post-race penalty about his driving from Mercedes was subsequently withdrawn. Overall, Verstappen had no regrets with how it had all gone.

"I think it’s one of my best ones, I got a clean start and from there you can do your own race. Lately I haven’t had that so I think it was definitely in the top three of my best races, of course, my best one for the moment will always be Barcelona because of the victory.

"I felt very happy with the performance in general over the whole weekend as well, we were always up there and I’m very happy with the ending."

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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.