McLaren are out of reach, reckons Verstappen

The newly-crowned four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen has acknowledged that McLaren appear to be out of reach at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after the dominant showing from the Woking-based outfit on the opening day at the Yas Marina Circuit.

Having enjoyed a successful weekend last time out in Qatar, Red Bull have endured a more difficult day on the first day of the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

On the back of his 63rd F1 victory from last weekend, Max Verstappen consistently complained about the lack of front-end grip in the second free practice session. The Dutch driver ended up 17th, 1.081s off the fastest time of the day which was set by McLaren’s Lando Norris.

Reflecting on his day, the Dutch driver explained that his team will need to find big gains overnight, but even if Red Bull managed to fine-tune his car, he rules out the possibility of beating McLaren this weekend.

“The balance of the car wasn’t very good today, which made it pretty tricky to drive and meant we had quite a difficult session. This is something that we need to work on overnight and we will be looking in to what we can do to improve our form.

“We can do better; at this pace I don’t think we would beat the McLarens, as they seem really quick this weekend, but I think if we can get in the top five or six that would be good. It will be about recovery as today was quite tricky, but we will see what happens tomorrow.”

His team-mate Sergio Perez finished the day three places higher up in the order, setting the 14th quickest lap, he was also over a second slower than what Norris managed on his qualifying simulation run.

The Mexican driver commented: “It was tricky out there today, over one lap it is hard right now and I think we have some work to do. I think the long run is a lot more promising but over one lap we need to find something, we need to try and connect the car.

“We have been trying a lot of stuff out there, but it’s not been coming together just yet. The car is not feeling tremendously bad, it’s just we are slower over one lap than we want to be. The long run was encouraging but we need to work together to make sure we are competitive in qualifying tomorrow.”