Max Verstappen is fearing a repeat of Red Bull’s tough Hungarian Grand Prix weekend after the first day of practice at Zandvoort.
He ended the second practice session in fifth place, almost six tenths of a second slower than pace-setter Lando Norris. However Verstappen, who qualified eighth and finished ninth at the Hungaroring, expects it will be difficult to replicate that performance tomorrow.
“I think it really will be hard enough to be in that top five, it looks like,” he told the official Formula 1 channel.
He said his main problem was “just understeer” in the RB21. “That’s my main problem, and in the middle sector there are a lot of long corners so it’s not great.”
During the session Verstappen told his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase “the rear axle’s bouncing a lot” in the middle sector of the lap.
Red Bull is one of few teams to have brought any new parts for their car this weekend. It has introduced a minor upgrade to the front wing which it said is tailored to the demands of Zandvoort with extended chords to increase the amount of load it can generate.
However Verstappen said he still felt limited by the car. “I’m still struggling with the same things and again we tried a lot of things with the car but it just doesn’t really seem to change anything in terms of my underlying problems.
“So we’ll look overnight if we can find a bit more but I’m not going to expect a massive turnaround. I think it’s just tricky. The layout of the track also probably doesn’t suit our problems that we have with the car.”
The two Red Bull drivers were separated by three tenths of a second at the end of practice, Yuki Tsunoda two places behind his team mate in seventh.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
