2021 Russian GP: Post-Friday practice comments from Max and Perez

Red Bull’s 2021 Russian GP started with a set back after team confirmed that Championship leader Max Verstappen will take new engine components and will start the Sunday’s race from back of the grid irrespective of his qualifying position.

So Max Verstappen and Red Bull worked on long run pace instead of one lap speed during Friday practice session. With Rain forecasted for both Saturday and Sunday, anything is possible in the race.

Friday morning got the weekend underway, probably clean dry day of the weekend. Max put in 13 laps during the session with a best time of 1:34.654,+0.227s down on the lead Mercedes. The Dutchman finished the session in P3 just behind both Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton.

Checo Perez finished the session in P9 with a session-best time of 1:36.188, +1.761s down on Bottas P1 time. The Mexican managed to complete 22 laps for the morning session.

In The afternoon Free Practice Two session, the track heat up from the morning, due to the Russian sun shining strong. At the end of the session Max completed 20 laps with a best time of 1:34.621 placing him in P6. His best efforts were +1.028s slower than Valtteri Bottas, who topped FP2 once again. Checo’s best time was 1:34.938 seeing him finish in P11 after completing 22 laps.

Max Verstappen

“We thought it would be best to take the engine penalty here in Russia, we took everything into account before making the decision and we of course considered the weather for tomorrow. We had to take the penalty at some point so if we didn’t take it here, we would have taken it somewhere else.

As for the set up, we are trying to make the best possible race car for this weekend despite starting from the back of the grid. I hope it’s going to work out and we will try to make the best of it during the race on Sunday, for now let’s wait and see what the weather will be like tomorrow.”

Sergio Perez

“I think we have some good information going into qualifying tomorrow, when there won’t be much running due to the rain, so today was probably the last chance we have to test the dry conditions before qualifying. I think there is potential in the car for this weekend, we just have to make sure we get it right.

I think my first and second sector looked good but there are some areas to improve in the third sector. There are some set-up changes we might need to make to the car to suit the weather conditions come qualifying but there are still a lot of interesting things to be analyzed later on this evening.

With Max starting from the back, it is going to be a bit of a challenge as a Team and obviously Mercedes are very strong around here but hopefully we are able to put some pressure on them and qualify very close to them, that would be ideal. “