Following victory at the Canadian Grand Prix two weeks ago, reigning world champion, Max Verstappen, is working hard to prepare his car for the British Grand Prix this weekend. The First Practice session of the weekend saw a missed opportunity for drivers to collect data, as rainfall got in the way of dry-tyre running.
Verstappen was able to set a time good enough for fourth-place in Free Practice Two, and now seems more confident in the areas that Oracle Red Bull Racing can improve on.
“It’s always a bit tricky when you don’t run a lot in FP1, it means there’s a lot more guess work in FP2. I think we know what we need to work on and we’ll do that overnight. It looks like it’s going to rain during qualifying tomorrow, so there’ll be different conditions compared to our sessions today.
“I got a few laps in with high fuel on the softest compounds, the tyres wear quickly here with all the high-speed corners, so it’s always going to be quite tricky to manage the tyres on this track. Overall it went okay today and I’m looking forward to qualifying tomorrow.”
Sergio Pérez describes Red Bull car as ‘miles off’ the simulator’s car
Meanwhile, at the other side of the Red Bull garage, mechanics are less certain on the steps that are needed to achieve in order for Sergio Pérez to feel comfortable with his car. The Mexican claims that his preparations in the simulator are “miles off” the real-life feeling of the car, and suspected aerodynamic changes will need to be made in order to regain that confidence.
“It wasn’t a great session today, from the preparation I had on the simulator the car is miles off that. We suspect the issues are related to the aerodynamics but I can’t go into too much detail until I see the data properly and then we need to understand the problems.
“Because of that we had a very short long run and then impacted running at the end of the session too. It’s not a great start to the weekend, we are a bit on the backfoot now and we need to look into it in more detail now. It will be difficult to catch up, but we have done it before and as long as we are able to get things in the right place we should be good.
“You need confidence around these tough corners here, so as long as I can get that back things should be alright. Ferrari look strong and I hope we can match them tomorrow come qualifying.”
After a disastrous weekend in Canada, following a mistake in Qualifying Two and a reliability issue in the race, Pérez will be hoping the rest of his weekend will finish smoothly in order to catch up to his team-mate in the drivers standings.
