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SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium: Max Verstappen said Red Bull could always count on him, as the four-times Formula One champion gave new team boss Laurent Mekies a winning start in a Saturday sprint at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The race was the first since Christian Horner, who led Red Bull into Formula One in 2005, was dismissed by the team’s owners.

Verstappen seized the lead on the opening lap from second at the start and kept McLaren’s Oscar Piastri behind him to secure his and the team’s first win of any sort since Imola in May.

While worth only eight points, the victory was a significant statement after the recent restructure at the Milton Keynes factory.

“The team can always count on me. They will always get my very best, whoever is in charge. They know that. I’m never holding back or anything,” Verstappen told reporters.

“I’m always trying to give them the best possible result, and that’s also what they pay me for. For sure, it’s positive. We need, of course, positive energy, and that’s a great start for us.”

Verstappen said it was too early to talk about further changes to be made at Red Bull and Mekies needed to build relationships and see how the team operated.

“Then at one point, you come to conclusions and maybe you want to change something, and this is something that will happen over the coming weeks, months,” he said.

“So, it’s really early days, but so far, he’s very keen and very motivated, and that’s exactly what you want also. I got on very well with him. So, yeah, it’s been a very good start.”

NEW DELHI: An Indian firm that shipped $1.4 million worth of an explosive compound with military uses to Russia in December said on Saturday it complies with Indian rules and the substance it had shipped was for civilian industrial purposes.

Reuters reported on July 24 that Ideal Detonators Private Limited shipped the compound, known as HMX or octogen, to two Russian explosives manufacturers despite US threats to impose sanctions on any entity supporting Russia’s Ukraine war effort.

One of the Russian companies listed in Indian customs data as receiving the compound is the explosives manufacturer Promsintez. An official at Ukraine’s SBU security service has said the Russian company has ties to the military and that Ukraine launched a drone attack in April against a Promsintez-owned factory.

Promsintez did not respond to a request for comment.

Ideal Detonators said in an emailed response to Reuters that the material it shipped was not military grade. “The shipment ... is for industrial activity and it’s a civil explosive,” the company said.

The US government has identified HMX as “critical for Russia’s war effort” and has warned financial institutions against facilitating any sales of the substance to Moscow.

The US Treasury Department has the authority to sanction those who sell HMX and similar substances to Russia, sanctions lawyers have said.

HMX is widely used in missile and torpedo warheads, rocket motors, exploding projectiles and plastic-bonded explosives for advanced military systems, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Center and related defense research programs. The compound also has some limited civilian applications in mining and other industrial activities.