Daniel Ricciardo says pair are pushing each other to the next level
Sunday 31 July 2016 18:07, UK
Max Verstappen says he "took one for the team" at the German Grand Prix as the Red Bull driver finished third behind team-mate Daniel Ricciardo at Hockenheim.
The 18-year-old took the last place on the podium behind race winner Lewis Hamilton and Ricciardo after been put on a different strategy to his stable-mate driver during the first round of pit stops.
While Verstappen changed to a new set of supersoft tyres, the same compound he started on, Ricciardo was switched onto softs for the second stint of the race as Red Bull split their strategies.
"I think I definitely took one for the team today but that's alright. Daniel and I have a good relationship so we can do that," Verstappen told Sky F1.
"The most important thing for us was to be in front of Ferrari and that definitely worked today, we were even challenging Mercedes and we kept Nico [Rosberg] behind us, which was good.
"You have to earn [the team's] trust as well a bit. I'm still quite new to them but it's alright, the pace was good so I'm happy with that. For the team it was a very positive day."
Ricciardo, meanwhile, reckons he and Verstappen have been raising each other to new heights since the latter joined the team earlier on this season.
"I genuinely believe we're pushing each other to another level," he said. "I always felt I was pushing myself as hard as I could but maybe we really are finding a bit more out of it. The team is feeling that and it's good we're all pushing each other in the right direction.
"We went into Budapest thinking this would be our best chance for the next few races, but today both of us were ahead of the pole sitter and we had genuine race pace."
And team principal Christian Horner praised the pair for the way they worked together in Germany for the good of Red Bull.
"We set off with the objective of at least trying to do one on the two-stop, but then the tyre degradation was a little higher than we wanted," he said. "So at the first stop we put the drivers on different tyres, Max went onto the supersofts and Daniel onto the soft, so then they were running slightly different races.
"The way they worked together as a team to ensure we got both cars ahead of Nico when he had that penalty was fantastic, they co-operated as well as you could expect.
"They worked exactly as a team should, in harmony with the pit wall and did everything that could have been done."
Don't miss the F1 Report: German GP review and half-term report on Wednesday at 8.30pm on Sky F1 with Natalie Pinkham, Marc Priestley and Mike Gascoyne
