Verstappen: Most important not to chase like last year

Last year's Red Bull RB13 was troublesome throughout the early stage of the season but got decidedly better as the season progressed, however, it was a case of too little too late for Verstappen despite winning two of the last six races of the season.

As for this year's RB14, Verstappen said, "Well, the halo, that will be very ugly, not looking forward to that but in general I hope the car will look great and hopefully it’s fast. Hopefully, it’s a good step forward so we have a good car straight from the beginning of the year so we don’t end up in a chase like we did last year. I think that’s the most important for us."

"I always try to do the best I can anyway," stated the Dutchman. "I don’t need to set particular goals to motivate myself. Every race to me is a chance to win. Some tracks, of course, will be better for us than others, but we’ll have to find that out with the new car."

Reliability was a problem last year for Renault powered teams and this year with engine limit reduced from four to three is going to add to the stress, "That will definitely be a big challenge. Last year we used six. So, to go from six to three is basically half. Hopefully, we will make it but we’ll have to wait and see…"

Regarding the vibe at the factory in Milton Keynes, Verstappen said, "The mood is good, I guess. Everybody is happy, everybody is of course motivated for the new season after the strong end we had last year. We can’t wait to get going again. Holidays are nice and it’s good to charge your batteries again but at one point you want to get going."

Mercedes and Ferrari were the teams to beat last year and should be so once again, asked if they will be beatable by Red Bull this season, "At the moment I don’t know!"

"You never know, because you don’t know how good of a job the team has done compared to the other teams. At the moment I have no expectations because we don’t know where we are until the testing. Well, actually until the first race. Only then we will know where we really are," added the three times grand prix winner.