Red Bull’s running on the fourth day of pre-season testing was limited by two problems with their RB16, but the team is not concerned by either of them.
A suspension fault confined Alexander Albon to the garage for much of the morning. However his team mate Max Verstappen, who took over the car in the afternoon, said “it was a trial part so it’s all good.”While Albon covered just 29 laps, Verstappen managed 84 in the afternoon. However his car came to a stop on-track five minutes before the test was due to end.
“I don’t know what happened at the end so we will still look into it,” said Verstappen.
Red Bull’s head of race engineering Guillaume Rocquelin said Verstappen’s stoppage “is something we understand and is not a concern.”
Verstappen ended the day second quickest overall, but said it was more important for the team to develop its understanding of the car than push for fast lap times.
“You do push it with whatever you have on the car, which feels alright for the moment, but it’s just difficult to say anything about it because you don’t know if it’s going to be quick enough.
“At the end of the day, you also don’t look at it yet because it’s just testing. It’s a different track to the first races as well.
“So I think what is the most important is that you just try a lot of things and then you know what the car is reacting to. And when you go to Melbourne you know a little bit when you have understeer or oversteer what direction you have to go.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2020 F1 season
- Pictures: Wrecked chassis from Grosjean’s Bahrain fireball crash to go on display
- Bottas vs Rosberg: Hamilton’s Mercedes team mates compared after 78 races each
- F1 revenues fell by $877 million in Covid-struck 2020 season
- Hamilton and Mercedes finally announce new deal for 2021 season
- F1 audience figures “strong” in 2020 despite dip in television viewers
bosyber (@bosyber)
26th February 2020, 20:34
That’s a very good description of how successful testing goes.
Also interesting Ferrari and Haas talk of what they are doing now compared with last year, that shows the wisdom of going about it like Verstappen describes.
JohnS
27th February 2020, 2:06
Need to put more gas in next time. Just saying.