Verstappen surprised by podium finish in Shanghai

For all his talk about a wet race giving him a chance to bounce back from a disappointing qualifying, Max Verstappen could never have expected the start he got in Shanghai on Sunday.

The Red Bull driver flew off the damp grid and gained nine positions by the end of the first lap. Having started the race from 16th place, he was up to second by the end of lap 11. Small wonder, then, that the teenager was declared driver of the day by the fans after the end of the Chinese Grand Prix.

“That was not bad I think!” he said afterwards. “I really enjoyed the first lap where I passed nine cars.”

He agreed that the first lap had felt almost as surreal as a playing a Formula 1 video game simulation.

“More or less, it felt a bit like that. Of course very happy with that, and then afterwards I think a very good race,” he continued. “From there onwards I think some good moves as well to overtake.”

“Very happy to be on the podium. I didn’t expect that at all – especially starting from 16th,” he said. “When I woke up this morning I never expected to be on the podium.”

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His performance was all the more remarkable given that he hadn’t been able to work on the set-up of the car this weekend. No one got more than a couple of laps on track on Friday, and a technical issue sidelined Verstappen in qualifying.

“I was a little bit struggling with the balance of the car because [Saturday] I didn’t run a lot in qualifying. We didn’t really have a good picture of it because we changed a lot from FP3 on the car. I don’t think it was perfect in the race, especially with the cold temperatures.

“This track is really a lot of understeer and I got even more. Then I was just trying to keep the left front [tyre] alive and it was just very hard. I was just happy to stay in touch.”

Verstappen was less than happy to be held up by the lapped Haas car of Romain Grosjean in the closing laps.

“There were blue flags all the time,” he pointed out. “It’s disturbing. As soon as you get into two seconds, and especially with the car balance is already on the understeer side, it’s horrible.

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“I think he had no one in front and there was no one behind us, so he could have let us pass.

“At the end of the day it didn’t damage anything in terms of my race, but it’s not ideal. We need to look into what we should do with those cars in terms of blue flags.

“I just wanted clear air because I was already struggling a lot with the fronts and that doesn’t help. But at the end we still finished on the podium, so very happy.”

GALLERY: All the pictures from Sunday in Shanghai

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