It was a good afternoon for Tilbrook’s Red Bull Racing at the Spanish Grand Prix

A second-place finish was better than expected for Max Verstappen at the first ever race at the Madring.

While low on entertainment, Verstappen had a pretty eventful Spanish Grand Prix, avoiding Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari at the first corner, before holding off Lando Norris’s McLaren in the latter stages to come home second behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli.

It was also a solid afternoon for Red Bull Racing team-mate Liam Lawson, who climbed two positions to finish sixth - his best result since taking over for injured Isack Hadjar.

“It was a great result, and we really maximised our performance, with finishing P2 on this track,” said Verstappen afterwards. “At the start, Lewis clipped the kerb and jumped back onto the racing line, I had to go off track, otherwise both of us would have taken damage.

“I don't think we had the pace to challenge for the lead anyway, Kimi and Lando were faster than me throughout, so I'm happy with second.

“It's a circuit that's very difficult to pass on; if you position yourself in the middle, there isn't really a way through, so I was able to hold off Lando until the end.”

Speaking about his race, which was a fairly uneventful one in the middle of the pack, Lawson said: “I think it was a decent race. We had good speed through parts of it, but I just think we weren’t on the ideal strategy today.

“We went for the alternate strategy, starting on the hards. At the start I lost the position to Franco Colapinto (Alpine) and lost a lot of time as it was, but by the time I cleared him the VSC came out and they’d boxed, so it was just tricky from there.

“The start was exciting and I had to take a lot of risks to get the move done on Franco because it’s quite difficult to overtake here.

“It would’ve been nice to start a bit higher, but considering where we did start, the result today was good and I’m happy we managed to gain two places in the race.

“I’m much more confident in the car this week, we’ve made a couple of great steps, so there are some good things to take away from the weekend.”