Red Bull far from the top
First free practice sessions of the 2024 world championship not entirely positive for the Red Bull reigning champion, at least judging exclusively by the results in the standings. While Max Verstappen finished both tests in sixth position, the second RB20 of Sergio Perez she finished behind the Dutch #1 on both occasions.
Perez's performances
At the end of the PL1'Checo' paid a delay of more than half a tenth from the surprising RB of Daniel Ricciardo, leader of the standings but one of the few drivers to have achieved the personal best time using soft tyres, as opposed to the averages of the Mexican of Red Bull. A gap that pushed Perez out of the top-10, and more precisely to 12th place.
In PL2, however, #11 managed to move up a few positions using his own softbut not going beyond 10th place. Results which, as for his teammate, do not arouse any worries or thoughts in the Red Bull driver, who used the free practices to analyze some elements of the car not tested during the pre-season tests:
“I think these sessions were key and very interesting – he has declared – we have a lot of things to analyze about the car that we didn't have the chance to do during testing, so we're exploring them now with mechanical balancing. The good thing is that whatever we do seems to help us with our race pace Our goal is to create a more balanced car and improve things for the race and qualifying. Today went as expected. We heard a lot of people say we were a second ahead after testing, which made me smile because I knew the gap would be much closer. The grid looks very competitive and on Friday night, in qualification, it will be very close“.
#Perez #expected #Qualifying #tough
