Max Verstappen says it “doesn’t make sense to hype up” Red Bull’s chances of challenging for the Formula 1 ꦡworld championship before the season has even started.

Red Bull is hoping to fight Mercedﷺes harder this season and mount a sustained push for its first drivers’ and constructors’ wo💝rld championship titles since 2013, having finished a huge 254 points adrift last year despite winning two races.

Speaking to media ahead of the new campaign, Verstappen, who alongside new teammate Sergio Perez got his first chance to drive Red Bull’s newly launcᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚhed RB16B car on Wednesday at Silverstone, was keen to avoid talking up the Milton Keynes squad’s chances.

Asked whether he feels 2021 will be the year Red Bull finally challenges Mer💯cedes, Verstappen replied: “We don’t know yet, to be honest. I am always very realistic and it makes no sense to talk about stuff now.

“We have to go to Bahrain and look at it there, at the first race, and see if we succeeded or not. We know where we want to be and where we want to get to and that’s what we now need to try a🔴nd realise.”

Verstappen said he is seeking “more grip and more power” from Re🏅d Bull’s updated RB16B, with Honda working hard over the winter to fast-track the introduction of a brand-new engine that was originally intended for 2022.

“People alw🤡ays talked about the rear-end being so twitchy, I think 🅰it’s just general grip we were lacking a bit,” he explained.

"Also, we were a bit down on power. We know that - th𝕴ere’s no secret behind it, you can see it. So we worked a lot with Honda throughout th🉐e winter.

“It’s 🤡all looking promising but it doesn’t make sense now to hype it all up. First, it’s more important to get to the track in Bahrain and try to do the best amount of learning we can on the car and the engine to opღtimise everything.

𝕴“I want to stay low-key and focus on our job. We should do the talking on the track, not next to the track. That’s what I prefer🦩.”

While Verstappen said it was too early to get a proper read of the RB16B from his♔ ꦬ;shakedown run, he is hopeful that the work the team put in to understand the issues it faced with its 2020 car will bear fruit and enable Red Bull to hit the ground running this time around. 

“The car is always on the edge and a fast car is 𓃲never super easy to drive, because if it becomes super easy to drive, most the time it is too understeery anyway,” Verstappen saဣid.

“I just wanted more grip, it doesn’t mean that it’s tricky to drive because you just adapt to the situation you are in. I think at the end of the season Mercedes stopped ✱developing ꦜthat car from whenever, June or July, because you couldn’t really see a lot of updates.

“We just kept learning and we know we had a few issues with that car and we wanted to improve it. Also knowing the regulations wouldn’t change that much, obviously the fl𝐆oor changed a bit but in geꦍneral, the car stayed very much the same.

“For us, it was important to get on top of that and let’s see this year if we improved it even more and we are even better and hopefully we can be more com𒐪petitive compared to Mercedes.”