F1 | Max: “Fast Ferrari, but it doesn't worry me. There is margin”

Thanks to a few too many problems, the Australian one was an ideal Friday for Max Verstappen, but the Dutchman still has a certain confidence for the rest of the weekend, aware that he has a car from which there is still potential to be extracted.

From the start of FP1, the Red Bull driver had to fight against annoying understeer, especially in turn six and turn ten, where he then damaged the bottom of his RB20 in the final minutes of the session. The Dutchman himself noticed this, underlining how inside the car he was starting to notice an increase in the bouncing phenomenon compared to what normally happens.

The engineers then actually found damage to his car to the bottom and also to the chassis, caused by an overly aggressive passage over a curb. This forced the mechanics to carry out a long repair job which also extended into the first part of FP2, so much so that Verstappen lost the first twenty minutes of the second session.

“Unfortunately it was a bit of a messy day due to what happened in FP1. I went wide, damaged the frame and also the chassis. It took some time to sort everything out and I lost about twenty minutes [della FP2], but the work done by the mechanics was excellent, I more or less managed to complete the program. Maybe on the long runs I would have liked to do a few more laps, but we lost twenty minutes, so that's how it went,” explained Verstappen at the end of the day.

Having wasted time at the beginning, the program has become significantly more compact, leaving less space for setup adjustments which will now have to be studied overnight. Even in FP2, the three-time world champion had to fight against understeer, particularly in the final sector, feeling on several occasions a progressive failure in terms of grip of the left front tyre. For this reason Max underlined that there is still work to be done to be able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but Red Bull are confident that they are on the right path despite the setback.

“He hit a curb and this contact caused relatively serious damage. For this reason we went out later [nella seconda sessione di prove]. We have wasted precious time. But I think the setup is going in the right direction,” added Helmut Marko, before explaining how the twenty minutes lost in the first part of the session negatively influenced the long run test. In fact, Max completed very few average laps with a good quantity of petrol on board: this allowed us to get an idea of ​​the car's behavior in a more loaded situation, but did not allow us to collect particularly useful data for studying degradation in the long run. distance.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Mark Horsburgh / Motorsport Images

Overall, though, Verstappen is very confident for the rest of the weekend. Working on the details he thinks there is still room for improvement, even compared to a Ferrari which seemed very fast. “I think overall our performances are ok. I think Ferrari is fast, but on our part there are several things we can work on to improve. There is nothing strange or worrying. I think we just need to do a bit of fine-tuning, then fix certain details of the car.”

In this regard, Helmut Marko added some details, underlining how from their data the Ferrari lapped using more aggressive mappings, but it is clear that there is still something to find on the setup side to keep up with the Ferrari over the long distance.

Speaking of the future, especially after the speculations of the last few days, following the confirmation of Verstappen himself on Thursday, Marko is also convinced that the Dutchman will remain in Red Bull, provided obviously that they continue to provide him with a competitive car: “In general , I would say yes,” said the Milton Keynes team consultant when asked if the three-time world champion will continue with his current team. “Even though a lot has happened this year… As long as we provide him with a competitive car, I don't think there is any doubt about his future.”