2021 US GP : Post-Friday reactions from Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez

Red Bull had a mixed Friday practice session at United States Grand Prix. The Bulls hit the track on a hot Friday morning for Free Practice One. The session was only three minutes old before Fernando Alonso’s Alpine stopped on track causing the red flags to come out.

This lost almost ten minutes of track time, but it didn’t hinder the Team too much. Max Verstappen finished P3 on the timesheet after completing 16 laps with a best time of 1.35.806. Checo Perez found himself four places behind his teammate in P7, with a best time of 1.36.798 after completing 20 laps.

In Friday afternoon’s Free Practice Two, both Bulls out on track as soon as the session went live, and both entered the track on medium tyres. 30 minutes into the session, both entered the pits and stuck on some soft tyres.

Sergio Perez set the fastest time of everyone in the session and ended his Friday in P1 with a time of 1:34.946, 0.257s ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris in P2. In total Checo completed 24 laps. Max was hindered by traffic in his session, and he finished P8 with a best time of 1:35.824 after a total of 23 laps.

Max Verstappen

“Overall it wasn’t easy out there today. The track is quite bumpy and to find the right compromise on the car hasn’t been the easiest but there are a few positive things to look at and we’ll continue to work on that overnight. In FP2, we didn’t manage to put the lap in on the soft tyre and it was also just a bit of a mess with the traffic. Hopefully everything will come together tomorrow so we can get a good lap in qualifying.”

Sergio Perez

“Today was a good day and FP2 was promising, but it’s going to be very tight in qualifying tomorrow. Mercedes were certainly very strong so let’s see what they have when it counts. I think we have to find a couple of tenths and put everything together to be in the mix for pole.

There’s a lot to be done now with the engineers to try and improve the car, I think there is some margin to improve our long run pace and our tyre degradation, but all in all it was a positive Friday.”