On the back of his first ever race win in Spain, Max Verstappen isn’t setting himself a lofty target for the next round in Monaco, rather, he says his aim is to avoid crashing into the walls like last year.
On his Monte Carlo debut, Verstappen and Romain Grosjean made contact heading to Turn 1 with the Dutchman making contact with the rear of Grosjean’s car, sending him flying into the barriers at high-speed.
He is hoping to avoid a repeat of that and reckons Red Bull won’t be far off a podium place, with their car suited to the twisty circuit which doesn’t demand much from the engine.
“We’ll see what happens in Monaco,” he said. “The car should be quite fast there so we just have to wait and see.
“The target for Monaco is first to stay out of the walls and if we do, hopefully we can be close to the podium.”
Speaking about his victory at the weekend, Verstappen only believed he could win on lap 61 of 66, but tried his hardest not to get carried away in those final laps.
“I think with five laps to go I thought ‘okay, now we have to win this race’ because I saw Kimi struggling with his tyres as well and from them on it was, ‘okay, make no mistakes, get a good exit out of the last corner and that should give you the win’,” he explained.
“You start to think about it and then quickly you go ‘no, don’t think about it, don’t think about it’ and just focus on what you have to do at that moment.
“You think about it a little bit and then you go back to focussing fully.”