Red Bull must be 'realistic' in title race against Hamilton

He may be splitting the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas in the championship standings, but Max Verstappen says his Red Bull Racing team has to be realistic in their expectations.

The Dutchman finished on the podium for the fifth race in a row on Sunday, but for the third time in four races trailed Hamilton home in second spot. Already 37 points adrift of the Mercedes driver, Verstappen is six points clear of Bottas after beating him for the fourth race in a row too.

His drive to second spot in Spain on Sunday was fairly routine, despite a brief debate with his team as he pleaded for new tyres early in the race. But while he kept Bottas comfortably at bay, Verstappen admitted Hamilton's current form is tough to match.

"At the moment we’re in-between the two Mercedes cars and of course we’d like to push Lewis harder but you have to be realistic as they still have the faster car," he said. “It’s a great result for us to split the two Mercedes cars today after they have been so quick and I’m very happy with that.

"Overall, it’s been another strong weekend with a good amount of points which we should be happy with. I tried everything to stay with Lewis in the first stint but overall their car was faster and Lewis was a bit too quick today.

"I expected some trouble from Valtteri towards the end when he pitted but I was happy with my tyres and he wasn’t catching. Second is of course good but that’s not why we are here, we are here to win so you can never be fully satisfied unless you do that."

Alex Albon's understated season continued in Spain as he came home eighth, a lap down. Still awaiting his first career podium, Thai driver started sixth but dropped two places as his struggles to get to grips with the RB16 continued.

He said: "It was a hard afternoon and I’m not happy with my race. It was really tricky out there and I just didn’t have any grip on any tyre compound. Each stint I was nursing and looking after the tyres but after six or seven laps I just had no grip. It was frustrating and the opposite to Silverstone last week. No matter what we did we just really struggled to keep the tyres alive.

"It hasn’t been an issue this year so we’ll need to look at the data and see the reasons behind it because at the moment we just have question marks. I was struggling in sector three mostly, I couldn’t stay close enough to cars ahead so I couldn’t overtake and I was kind of a sitting duck.

"Now we need to understand why today was so different to last weekend in the race so we can come back stronger and improve for Spa.”