F1 LIVE: Russell wins Australian Grand Prix as Verstappen vents fury | F1 | Sport

Max Verstappen says he didn’t enjoy the first race of the season in Melbourne despite battling from 20th place up to sixth on the grid.

Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: “No, not really [I didn’t enjoy it]. The overtakes were fun, but I’m also racing cars that are two seconds slower.

“For me, it’s just clearing the traffic, it sounds maybe weird but it’s just how I see it, it’s not really a fair fight.

“I just try to go through as clean as possible and try and get into my rhythm at one point when I cleared the mid-field.

“We had too much degradation and we were just really graining a lot on the tyres and that then comprised a lot on the rest of the race.

“We talked that the hard compounds would be better today for us, but that compound somehow didn’t work today.”