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Max Verstappen has admitted that he did not feel good in the latter stage of the race when he was forced to hold back team mate Daniel Ricciardo for the final spot on the podium.
Verstappen started sixteenth on the grid for today's race but was up to seventh by the end of sector 2. The Dutchman kept pushing and claimed his eighth career podium.
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"That was not bad I think," said the Dutchman modestly. "I really enjoyed that first lap where I passed nine cars and from there onwards I think there were some good moves as well to overtake.
"I was struggling a little bit with the balance of the car because yesterday I didn’t run a lot, of course, in qualifying, so I didn’t really have a good picture of it because we changed a lot from FP3 on the car.
"I don’t think it was perfect in the race especially with the cold temperatures, so this track is already a lot of understeer and I got even more. And then it was just trying to keep the left front (tyre) alive and it was very hard. I was very happy to stay in touch."
Verstappen was forced to dig deep to keep his team mate behind in the closing stages of the race: "It was not nice because I didn’t have a perfect car balance, then it’s not really nice to defend. But I managed to hold on and it was a good race for the team as well."
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But he came out on top so..