Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing): How he almost overtook winner Russell

Max Verstappen came within a whisker of victory on the treacherous Baku City Circuit: starting from eighth on the grid, he crossed the finish line just 192 thousandths of a second behind the virtually flawless winner, George Russell.

Second place, then – his 134th podium finish in the premier class. The 28-year-old Dutchman is clearly pleased with this result: “That was a brilliant race from the whole team, with Isack in P3 as well.”

“I struggled in the first part of the Grand Prix because the car wasn’t handling ideally on the medium tyres. Nevertheless, I managed to work my way up to third place.”

“Then I managed an excellent restart behind Oscar Piastri, and I was able to catch up with the Australian. So I was second behind George, and the gap was constantly fluctuating, by about a second.”

“On the final lap, when the yellow flag was out because of Bottas’s spin, George lost power because his turbo wasn’t spooling up fully, as he told me earlier. So I was able to close the gap significantly as we approached the finish line, but unfortunately the chequered flag came out just a tiny bit too early.”

“I hit the wall a couple of times and had to ask the team in between whether they could tell from the data if everything was OK. Fortunately, everything turned out fine.”

“After a difficult qualifying session with all my engine problems, we were able to put in a strong race – we can be really happy with that.”