Verstappen impressed with RB20: 'It shows the team know what they're doing'

Max Verstappen had just arrived at the Bahrain circuit, or he was already told that Sergio Perez would also be active in the second part of the test on Thursday. So while the drivers were doing their laps in the background, Verstappen had plenty of time to look back on the first day with the RB20 with the Dutch media.

A day after Helmut Marko was in particularly good spirits about Red Bull Racing's new car, Verstappen too told the media he had a good feeling about the RB20. "We only had that filming day in the rain, so we didn't get to do very much then," the Dutchman reported to the media, including GPblog, admittedly before Sergio Perez had problems with the RB20. "Then you put the car on the track here and immediately it feels good. Then you go through your whole test plan and that too actually went smoothly. Actually experienced very few problems."

Verstappen confessed that he saw the first designs of the RB20 late last year. "I had already seen in Abu Dhabi what it would look like for the start of this season. But you know, I don't ask a lot about that either. It just happened to come out that way in Abu Dhabi that I got to see the drawings. But after that, I didn't ask anyone about it either. I say, 'I do trust you to make a car as soon as possible'. I'll see for myself."

Verstappen praises Red Bull Racing

The RB20 performed fine on Wednesday, which gave Verstappen confidence: "Well, that just shows that the team does know what they are doing. And also on the simulator that we do a lot of things testing to build a starting set-up. And it is quite clever to pick up the right things from a car that has never been on the track before, in the simulator. What? Well, just in terms of balance. In terms of pure speed, of course, I don't know relative to the rest. But if the balance is just right, that's obviously nice to start with."

Remarkable about the RB20 are its similarities to last season's Mercedes, which was not a successful car. The outside world was therefore a bit surprised that Red Bull chose this. "Yes, but I just trust what the people in our team naturally do. Look, they are confident that this is better than everything else they tested in the winter."