Red Bull struggled to match Mercedes’ pace during Friday Practice session, but it’s too early to draw a conclusion.
In the afternoon FP1, Max Verstappen setting a best time of 1:29.842 to finish in P2, just 0.056s behind Hamilton, after completing a total of 23 laps. Sergio Perez finished the session with a best time of 1:30.960 after completing 27 laps which saw him finish the session in P11.
In the latter session of Friday, Free Practice Two, it was the first session under the lights at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. Max found himself in P4 after completing a total of 20 laps with a best efforts of 1:29.213.
Sergio Perez completed a total of 22 laps and finished in P9 with a fastest lap time of 1:29.768. His best efforts was +0.750s down on session leader Lewis Hamilton’s P1 time.
Max Verstappen :
“Overall, it’s a really cool track, there are a lot of fast corners and it’s fun to drive. We struggled to get heat into the tyres in FP2, which we will of course look into. Then we made a few changes from FP1 to FP2 which didn’t quite work but hopefully we can find the right balance come qualifying tomorrow.
There are of course a lot of things to work on and improve so we’ll see what we can do to get more pace out of the car overnight. Looking ahead to qualifying, I think it might be quite difficult with the traffic but in general it’s hard to tell how Saturday is going to go as anything can happen but we’ll push hard and give it everything.”
Sergio Perez:
“It was a lot of fun out there today, it’s a really nice circuit, it is very fast and enjoyable to drive. It is going to be tricky in qualifying with traffic management, we saw that a bit when everyone was on the soft tyre at the end of FP2. I think it will be an interesting race because this track is challenging, if you make a mistake it can be extremely costly. In qualifying it will all be about trying to be in the right place at the right time.
On the long runs we didn’t have enough laps to get a real read on how we will perform so I don’t think my time on the soft tyres was reflective on where we actually are. I think there is plenty more to come from the car, so hopefully we can find the right balance and pace to be in contention in qualifying. It is going to be hard to achieve the perfect lap out there but we also have a long race ahead of us on Sunday and anything can happen. We just have to stay up there and be on it as much as possible.”
