Max Verstappen declared himself satisfied with the progress Red Bull has made after he completed his pre-season test running today.
He will not drive tomorrow as team mate Sergio Perez is due to cover a full day in the RB19.Verstappen covered 47 laps during the four-and-a-quarter hours’ running in the second half of today’s session. He was confined to the garage by a technical problem at one stage.
Nonetheless Verstappen was on course to end the session on top of the times for the second day in a row, until Zhou Guanyu produced a rapid lap using a soft set of tyres to go quickest by four-hundredths of a second.
The world champion was more concerned with the tests the team carried out with its latest design, and was encouraged to find it behaved as expected.
“Today we focussed on the smaller details and took little steps,” he said. “Again, the car was responding well to everything we did. We learnt a lot for next weekend and of course for future races as well.”
“To see it on track and how it behaves on track is great. We’ll have to see how quick we will be next week but I’m feeling positive.”
Red Bull’s head of race engineering Gianpiero Lambiase confirmed the team experienced “a small teething issue, which whilst minor, cost us some track time” during Verstappen’s stint in the car. They plan “a fairly packed program tomorrow to ensure we come away with all of the data we need.”
“But from Max’s short outings today, we know we are honing in on a package ahead of the race,” Lambiase added. “His one-and-a-half days have gone in a flash, but he is comfortable in the car and will be ready for battle.”
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