Azerbaijan GP: Post Friday practice comments from Max and Red Bull

Red Bull and Max wants to continue their winning momentum in Azerbaijan GP. The Milton Keynes team took one point lead in constructor championship battle over rivals Mercedes after a successful Monaco GP.

The Red Bulls got their weekend up and running on Friday afternoon by clinching top of the time sheets in both practice sessions. Based on Friday times they are favorites to get pole on Saturday.

At the end of the hour Max was top of the timesheet in P1 with a fastest time of 1:43.184. The Dutchman managed a total of 19 laps. Checo brought the RB16B home in P4 setting a 1:43.630. He completed 17 laps.

For the final session of Friday, Free Practice Two, the timesheets looked good from a Team perspective. Sergio ended the hour in P1 setting the fastest time of the session with a 1:42.115. The Mexican racked up 22 laps. Max wasn’t far behind his teammate in P2 with a 1:42.216. He completed 23 laps in total.

Similar to Monaco this weekend’s track is an unforgiving circuit and anything can happen across the race weekend. However, when it counts on Sunday, overtaking is possible, unlike at Monte Carlo.

Sergio Perez

“I’m happy with today and I think we’ve definitely made some good progress. We did a very good analysis after Monaco and today felt like I am understanding the car more and how I need to drive it.

I think this is probably the best Friday of the season for me, it’s the most complete in terms of data and how comfortable I feel with the car. Hopefully we can get a good, clean lap in qualifying tomorrow which is when it matters, but we’ll still work hard tonight to improve and try to find some more lap time.”

Max Verstappen

“Performance wise I think we had a great start to the weekend here in Baku. It was quite windy out there today which wasn’t easy for any of us, but it definitely makes things more interesting.

In FP1 the car felt pretty decent, I was quite comfortable and then for FP2 we made a few changes to see if it was better but I don’t think it was, so we’ll look into that overnight and see what direction we will go for qualifying. So far I think we look pretty strong as a Team and I’m very happy with that so let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”