Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Circuit de Catalunya, 2021

Red Bull seem “competitive” despite ninth place in practice – Verstappen

2021 Spanish Grand Prix

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Max Verstappen was satisfied with the performance shown by his Red Bull despite only setting the ninth-fastest time in practice.

“We seem quite competitive,” said Verstappen, who lies eight points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton going into this weekend’s race.

“How competitive we are going to be tomorrow is always going to be a question mark,” Verstappen continued, “but from our side, we are quite happy.

“Of course you always want to improve and you want to do better. But there was nothing weird going on today so we just have to make sure that tomorrow we are up there.”

Verstappen ended the day ninth-fastest after losing time at the reprofiled turn 10 during his qualifying simulation run on soft tyres. “I was just a little bit wide in turn 10 so we got into the dirt,” he explained. “But overall, I think we had quite a good day.

“The car seems quite competitive so I’m looking forward to tomorrow to try and improve a bit further. But nothing shocking today.”

Despite his delay, Verstappen was the quicker of the two Red Bull drivers, Sergio Perez setting the 10th-fastest time. He described his day as “tricky” and said he needs to improve his one-lap pace.

“These days with the limited practice that we have, we had a couple of delays in both sessions and that means that we were rushing a bit into traffic and stuff like that,” Perez recounted. “A lot to understand and pace to be found tonight, especially over one lap.

“The long run pace looks stronger. But we’ve got to work and see what we are able to take for qualifying given how important it is here.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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9 comments on “Red Bull seem “competitive” despite ninth place in practice – Verstappen”

  1. Max was two tenths or so down from his FP1 time, albeit on the mediums I think. There’s plenty of pace left in that Red Bull. I expect Merc to be ahead tomorrow, but only by a tenth or two at most.

    1. RandomMallard (@)
      7th May 2021, 16:37

      Yeah I’m with you in thinking that the Merc is probably still the quicker car, but they were saying in FP1 it doesn’t look very stable in S3, and you can also add the fact that the Red Bull tends to prefer the warmer conditions, such as at the 2nd Silverstone race last year or Austria in 2019. It *could* be an interesting race. But then it’s Barcelona so….

      1. ‘Barcelona’ and ‘interesting race’… they really are a combination that rarely go together. Let’s hope Sunday brings something different!

        1. RandomMallard (@)
          7th May 2021, 16:59

          Yeah that’s true. But we can all dream can’t we! We must be due a good one now having not had a good race since 2016 and that was only good because the two mercs took each other out. With Valterri in that seat he’ll make sure to be in a different shipping lane to prevent contact

    2. Yeah clearly the fastest car. You could also see it on the long runs. Similarly behind the Mercedes, even on the softs compared to mediums, but that’s obviously to mask their superior pace advantage.

  2. Lorrydriver1
    7th May 2021, 16:53

    At what point does RB out Albon in the car for FP1 and compare his times with Checo?

    1. When Checo consistently performs worse in races than Albon?
      Practice times don’t mean much, the more important thing is that Perez has managed to come ahead of the midfield cars, something Albon didn’t do often enough.

    2. @Lorrydriver1 Replacing a regular driver for an FP1 isn’t something RBR does. Only a few teams ever do so, and those are mainly smaller ones.

    3. Lorrydriver1 as you continue watching F1 including practices you will know practice times mean nothing. It’s ok mate welcome to F1.

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