Max Verstappen says Red Bull can’t rely on its season-ending win in Abu Dhabi to fuel its hopes of success for next year, the Dutchman insisting that more “hard work” needs to be done over the winter.<\/p>\n
A dominant Verstappen – who launched his race from pole – trounced Mercedes’ drivers at Yas Marina on Sunday, the Dutchman delivering to the Milton Keynes-based outfit its second win of the year.<\/p>\n
“To be honest before I got here I didn\u2019t expect to win the race and be on pole, so maybe a little bit,” he said after Sunday’s race.<\/p>\n
“Of course, I also read that they [Mercedes] had to turn the engines down a bit, so that\u2019s not helping for them.<\/p>\n
“In general, I think the car performed very strong and better than expected, so of course very happy with that.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9RedBull<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Despite Red Bull’s superior performance and his comfortable margin of victory, Verstappen said the achievement should not be considered a harbinger for early success in 2021.<\/p>\n
“We know we have to work hard over the winter to be better and stronger because you can\u2019t just rely on this result,” he added.<\/p>\n
“We know that we still have to improve the car a lot and we know it\u2019s some areas where we have to really work on and that\u2019s not only on the car but also power-wise \u2013 we need more.”<\/p>\n
Historically, Red Bull has rarely set the pace at the outset of a season, the team gradually ramping up its performance in the first part of the year to deliver its full potential at the start of the summer.<\/p>\n
But Verstappen hopes Red Bull’s 2021 contender will for once hit the ground running in three months.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s always nice to win the last race, I think, for the whole team, especially after a year like this when it\u2019s very tough and a lot of races followed up after each other,” he added.<\/p>\n
“So yeah, it\u2019s been hard on everyone, especially the mechanics but also the people back in the factory manufacturing all the new parts because we brought quite a lot this year.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, good boost and yeah, I just hope that we learn from our mistakes \u2013 also at the beginning of this year (those) we made and hopefully build a better car to start next year.”<\/p>\n
“I hope we learn from the previous years that we have to be stronger in the beginning of the season to be able to give them a little bit of a harder time.”<\/p>\n
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers<\/p>\n
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via <\/em>Facebook<\/em> and <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Max Verstappen says Red Bull can’t rely on its season-ending win in Abu Dhabi to fuel its hopes of success for next year, the Dutchman insisting that more “hard work” needs to be done over the winter. A dominant Verstappen – who launched his race from pole – trounced Mercedes’ drivers at Yas Marina on … <\/p>\n