A disastrous second free practice session for Red Bull, with Verstappen in seventeenth place and Perez in second-to-last.
The Las Vegas weekend started off very poorly for Red Bull. After a first session that was inconclusive for everyone, the Anglo-Austrian team struggled significantly in the second session, with Max Verstappen finishing in seventeenth place, while his teammate Sergio Perez ended up in second-to-last place.
There will be a lot of work for the engineers of the reigning champions, as both cars appeared slippery, to put it mildly, and unable to complete the corners in a fully genuine manner. Both drivers had multiple off-track moments and couldn’t complete a single lap in qualifying simulation.
Max Verstappen commented on the challenging American Thursday, saying: “The track was very slippery, we struggled a lot to get the tires to work, especially on the dry lap. On the race pace, we were more competitive at the beginning, but even here there are some things to fix; the pace on the dry lap is quite far off. The conditions here are very particular, it’s really cold, but that’s the same for everyone: we need to figure out what we’re getting wrong, for me, it’s all about the tires. The car’s balance isn’t wrong, but we have no grip, it’s like driving on ice.”
Sergio Perez shared the same thoughts: “I think there’s some work to do on the fast lap, while the long run seemed more promising, but essentially we need to work on everything, we’re not where we’d like to be at the moment. Mainly, we’ve struggled with balance at low speeds, the rear is sliding a lot. We’ve reduced the downforce quite a lot with the rear wing, and this made things difficult.
We need to improve, especially on the dry lap, and this, we hope, will help us move in the right direction. We know that here in Las Vegas, Sunday is the most important day, you can overtake and everything else, so having a good rhythm will be crucial.”
Photo: X Red Bull Racing F1