Verstappen Admits Ricciardo is Fast, But Declares he is Faster

Without a doubt, Max Verstappen is highly talented. His talent is only matched by his self-confidence. The young prodigy claimed that he is faster than Red Bull team mate Daniel Ricciardo. Unfortunately, Verstappen’s claims have not been backed up his on-track perfomances. Instead, he has been on the receiving end of mechanical woes or unfortunate circumstances. He insisted that the car’s reliability was mostly to blame. 

The 19-year-old said. “What can I do? I just have to see the positives of the season, which is qualifying. The speed is there. Even in the race I was always in good positions before I failed.”

Is It Bad Luck?

Verstappen has rubbished claims that his reliability issues stemmed from his aggressive style behind the wheel. “My approach is right, so why should I change something? I am fast. We can see from the telemetry that I don’t do anything wrong or different to Daniel. It’s just funny that the problems on race day are always on my car.”

On Daniel Ricciardo

Max said that he can take comfort in the fact that he has demonstrated to be slightly faster than the Aussie in qualifying trim. He said that Daniel was always known as a fast qualifier. But he is faster this year by three or four tenths on average. That’s a lot of time. He continued, saying that he was full of self-confidence.

“I am also honest and straightforward — I do not lie. The only thing I want is a winning car.” Despite failing to reach his targets this season, Max Verstappen is still a happy Red Bull Racing driver. He said “In general the mood in the team is better and better. In the corners we are close to the others, but often we use more downforce to compensate for our power deficit so it’s hard to say exactly where we need to improve. Everything is in the right direction, but much of it is not in our hands. The car is our hands though and so that’s what we have to make the most of.”

So the big question is, can Max Verstappen break the jinx this weekend in Malaysia?