Max Verstappen feels he can now "trust" his Red Bull RB22 F1 car to a greater extent following a huge upgrade package.
Verstappen qualified the heavily-revised machine in fifth for the Miami Sprint race, but was firmly in the mix with McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes, even out-qualifying George Russell of Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari.
Detailing his initial impression of the new car, Verstappen felt that he could now extract more performance, although there was still a high-speed corner weakness.
"It feels more together. Of course, there are still things that we are working on, but it's been a really positive step for us," Verstappen explained.
"At the last few races, we were like, over a second behind. I would say we have almost halved that gap now, so that's positive.
"We're still very weak in the first sector, which is mainly high speed, so we know that we need to work on that, but the rest seemed all a bit more together.
"It seems like we have cleared a little bit of the midfield.
"It's still not where I wanted to be, obviously, but it's at least allowing me to trust it a bit more."
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