Reigning champion Max Verstappen endured a shock opening day at Las Vegas, but the data suggests that the Dutchman will have more to offer when teams turn up their engines in qualifying. F1Technical’s senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his latest analysis.
‘We have no grip’ – that was the verdict of Max Verstappen as he reflected on Red Bull’s opening day at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The Dutch driver had a relatively encouraging opening session, finishing fifth. However, he found himself at the bottom end of the leaderboard in Free Practice 2, setting a lap of 1m35.834s which was only enough for P17.
His team-mate Sergio Perez ended up tenth in the opening practice, half a second off the reigning champion. Although the Mexican improved his best time from FP1 by half a second, he finished down in the second-to-last position in the second outing.
Despite the lowly position in the second one-hour session, things might look slightly better than what Red Bull duo’s results indicate. They were both hampered by the red flag for Alex Albon’s stricken Williams in the second practice. As there were only just over 20 minutes left on the clock, the Milton Keynes-based outfit elected to concentrate on longer race simulation runs, which means that their real pace remains a mystery after the opening day at Las Vegas.
Commenting on his issues, Verstappen reckoned that his team struggled to get the tyres into their operating window which meant that he lacked pace both over a single lap and in race trim.
“It was really slippery on track today: I think we struggled to make the tyres work, especially over one lap, and we were quite far off with the pace.
“On the long runs we started off a bit more competitively, but we still need to fine tune a few things. It is very cold and the conditions are quite unique around here. However, at the end of the day this is the same for everyone, so we need to understand what we are doing wrong.
“The issue for us is definitely tyre related as we have no grip and it feels like driving on ice. We will look into what we can do to fix this and hopefully improve for tomorrow.”
By contrast, Perez complained about the balance of his car, claiming that the modified rear wing meant that the RB20 was extremely difficult to drive.
“I think we have some work to do over one lap, I think the long run looked a little bit more promising, but we have got to focus overnight to really try to exploit everything because we are not where we want.
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