Verstappen Pole-to-Win at Chinese GP

Round 5 of the season, Chinese Grand Prix took place at Shanghai International Circuit. Max Verstappen of Oracle Red Bull Racing, supported by Honda as a Team Partner, won the race, with Sergio Perez finishing P3.

Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team's Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda retired.

Max Verstappen

I think today went really well and I was very happy with everything, we had great pace in the whole race although of course with the deployment of the safety car, the gap that I had made was shortened and we then had to gain that back. Today the car was very well balanced, every time that we needed to be quick we were and it felt much more consistent to drive in comparison to the Sprint, even for the restarts and overall I am really pleased with the performance that we had as a team. Every race is different in terms of emotions, this one was particularly enjoyable because the whole weekend went so well, especially considering that it was a Sprint weekend which is always much more hectic. A weekend like this is as much as you can ever hope for.  A win in Shanghai was definitely on my list, to be here and to win in front of such an amazing crowd is very special and I am pleased that the race is back on the calendar.

Sergio Perez

The safety car cost us a little today, it would have been close but unfortunately it came at the wrong time for us and put us on the back foot and we lost two places. Fighting with Charles damaged my tyres a little too much and it made it hard. The level of degradation was a little too trying on this track to make better progress, so we struggled. I wanted more today, I did expect a little more from the race, the Sprint looked very promising but today we were not able to capitalise on that. We made some changes that potentially took away some of our performance. We will review those for Miami to make sure we keep this progression going to keep these better weekends. We are having a lot stronger weekends and it’s just a matter of now being able to lead from lap one and do our own race, hopefully that will come soon.

Daniel Ricciardo

We started to make up a lot of ground in the stint before the Safety Car but during the restart, I got a pretty big hit and the car was damaged. We decided to retire because I wasn’t really driving an F1 car. It’s very frustrating. I watched his onboard and it looked like he wasn’t even looking at me, it seemed that his helmet was looking at the apex. We’ll never know what could have happened later in the race, but I think we were looking in a good place. Getting ruined by someone else makes me frustrated and this is where the disappointment comes, because today we had an opportunity and we missed it. I think there’s a lot of disappointment for everyone in the team. When I got back to the garage, I saw the mechanics looking at the damage and they feel as heartbroken as I do. I think we definitely had a better weekend from a pace point of view, and I I think the team could feel some momentum and some shift to the season. We go onto Miami and we’ll just try to keep working on that.

Yuki Tsunoda

It’s unfortunate and frustrating how it ended up today. I was happy with how I progressed in the race until my contact with Magnussen. After the Safety Car, the start was good and I gained five positions, so I feel I maximised what I could do but the pace itself hadn’t improved as much as we wanted. We’ve been sliding more than other cars and the team has been pushing hard and helping me sort it out but overall, this week we weren’t able to show our true strong performance, and that’s a shame. We’ll look into why back in Faenza, and I know as a team we’ll come back stronger in Miami. It's a shame that also Daniel had to retire because he had good pace in this race, so as a team, it’s frustrating that neither car finished the race and we couldn’t score points.