Red Bull had a difficult Friday at Silverstone and were “miles away” from expectations, according to Sergio Perez – Max Verstappen is not worried
Is Red Bull having major problems at Silverstone? At least Friday’s practice session didn’t go as smoothly as desired for world champion Max Verstappen’s team. The Dutchman finished fourth, two tenths of a second behind, while team-mate Sergio Perez was only seventh, eight tenths of a second behind.
The Mexican in particular is puzzled by the lack of pace: “It was a difficult day and not what we expected,” he says. “The car feels completely different from how we prepared it in the simulator.” The Red Bull was “miles away” from that.
Perez speaks of some “aerodynamic problems”, which he does not want to elaborate on, but which the team will have to sort out by tomorrow. “We understand what’s going on, but in the end it’s important that we get it sorted,” he says. “Currently we are a little bit behind. ”
For him, the bad feeling follows on seamlessly from the last race in Canada: “That was the first time it didn’t go right for me in the RB18,” he says. “From there, this weekend for me is about getting that great feeling back and getting on the podium.”
Before the weekend, “Checo” was optimistic that Red Bull should be in a good position. After Friday, he is no longer quite so optimistic: “It’s going to be quite difficult. But we’ve done it before, and if I can get my confidence back, it should be fine.”
Team-mate and World Championship leader Max Verstappen is less worried, as usual. By not driving in the first practice session, the second practice is always a guessing game, he said. “Normally you build on the first practice. It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t a big problem either,” he says.
“Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work very well,” he further notes. “And this time it just wasn’t particularly good. But it wasn’t really bad either. We’re in it and we can look at a few things as well.”
He stresses that Red Bull knows what needs to be worked on. “And that’s what we’ll try to do overnight. And tomorrow it’s probably going to rain again, so we’ll have very different conditions again. ”
