Verstappen looks back at last year in Melbourne: 'Very frustrating'

Around the world, Max Verstappen has celebrated victories, but the Melbourne Grand Prix has not yet proved te be a massive success. Last season, the now two-time world champion had to retire with technical problems. Going back a year, Verstappen recalls how difficult Red Bull Racing had it in Australia.

"I think last year our car was very heavily overweight," Verstappen said at the press conference ahead of the third Grand Prix of the season. "At this stage of the season, that didn't help. I think last year here we had a big shift in balance between qualifying and the race. That caught us out in the race. We were not reliable, so that of course is never nice in the beginning of the year. But we also knew that there was a lot of potential in that car."

Quickly understood where the problems were

In the end, Red Bull managed to fix all problems in time and the Austrian team became champions by far. Nevertheless, the irritation over the race in Australia has remained to this day. "Last year was very frustrating here, being slow in the race, retiring from the race. But I think we also understood quite quickly after the weekend what we did wrong, of course, with the setup. But also we had to work on our reliability, because I think from then onwards it was quite alright in terms of reliability."

Verstappen starts this season as a big favourite in Melbourne, where he finished on the podium only once. In 2019, he finished third.