Max Verstappen felt the cancellation of Free Practice 1 did not have a major impact at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The morning session at the Baku City Circuit was cancelled following a manhole cover being brought up by George Russell but the Red Bull Racing driver believed it didn’t hurt the team too badly as Free Practice 2 is more important.
“The lack of running this morning didn’t really hurt us as it was the same for everyone and FP2 is always the most important session on a Friday.”
The street circuit caught a few drivers out and the Dutchman admitted that the important thing on Friday was just getting laps and building up the speed.
“The track is very slippery and as you could see it was very easy to lock up or run wide, so it was important to complete as many laps as possible and get used to the track conditions.
“You have to drive to the limit of the car with the grip you have and you build up lap by lap, especially on a low grip street track like this, and you have to be ready to adapt.”
Verstappen was pleased with the eventual work done on Friday by the team and believes the team only need little improvements for the weekend rather than a wholesale changes.
“I’m satisfied with what we achieved today and now we will look into the data as there are always areas to improve, but it is mostly fine tuning.”
Free Practice 3 is the last chance the teams will get to fine tune the set-up before qualifying but Verstappen is happy with the car, however, he is not making any predictions ahead of qualifying.
“We don’t really have expectations for tomorrow yet and with only one practice session everyone can still improve a lot, but the initial balance seems fine and we completed a good number of laps on both tyre compounds.”
