Verstappen “not concerned” by Mercedes’ pace improvements ahead of F1 US GP

Despite reclaiming the lead of the drivers’ championship last time out at Istanbul Park, Mercedes enjoyed a significant advantage over Red Bull as Valtteri Bottas won the race by over 14 seconds.

Since introducing a significant upgrade at the British Grand Prix, Mercedes has often been the team to beat in terms of pure speed.

Speaking ahead of this weekend in Austin, Verstappen says he’s just focusing on improving Red Bull’s own performance.

“I'm not concerned because there's nothing we can do about it,” Verstappen said. “We just have to focus on our side, there are a few things we can do better.

“We learned a lot also in Turkey. We'll try to do better with our package, what we have, and try to find a bit more performance.”

The Dutchman admitted that Mercedes has taken a significant leap forward.

“Yeah, of course, he added. “They did. But like I said, we can't really do anything about that, so we have to focus on ourselves.”

Verstappen has never won at COTA, while Red Bull hasn’t since 2013.

He doesn’t believe the lack of performance in Turkey will necessarily carry over to Austin due to the difference in track layout and surface.

“It was all right but we know that we still have a bit of work to do, and we want to be faster, but the team result was good in Turkey, overall performance wasn’t amazing in Turkey,” Verstappen explained. “But we’ll try again here and see how quick we are.”

“Different track, different tarmac, so… I did spend a bit of time on the simulator as well, everything felt all right, but yes, we’ll find out tomorrow.”