Verstappen encouraged by “more competitive” Red Bull pace · F1 · RaceFans

Max Verstappen believes Red Bull have made progress with their car following their performance in Friday practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Although the world championship leader ended the day only sixth in the times, 0.545 seconds slower than pace-setter Charles Leclerc, Verstappen’s team mate almost matched the Ferrari driver’s time.

“I think, overall, a good day,” Verstappen told the official F1 channel afterwards. “We learned quite a bit.

“Now it’s just about tidying up the things that we tried. But I think so far we have been more competitive this weekend so that’s a positive.”

Verstappen made two notable errors during the second practice session. He skidded to a stop just shy of the barrier at turn five at one point.

“The track is very slippery,” he explained. “There’s a lot of 90-degree corners, so if you have a tiny lock[-up], sometimes you just hold the brake to not hit the wall or whatever just out of precaution.

“But for sure FP2 was a bit more difficult for me. So like I said, we just need to get the balance together a bit more and then I’m quite confident that we can be competitive.”

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Verstappen’s team mate Sergio Perez, who was only six-thousandths of a second slower than Leclerc on Friday, also believes Red Bull have taken a step forwards with their car after the problems they encountered in recent races.

“It was definitely a good, solid day,” he said. “I think there is some good basics.

“We did good progress from FP1 to FP2. So we just have to make sure that we are able to progress from here. I think we can definitely be in the mix for tomorrow.”

Red Bull brought a revised floor for its RB20 this weekend after discovering a recent upgrade did not perform as they expected it to.

“I think we are heading in the right direction,” said Perez. “We’re finding that we can put a little bit more together the car. It’s still a long way to go, I think, but it’s promising, what we’ve seen so far.”