Verstappen admits Red Bull have ‘a lot of work to do’ as he explains issues on Friday in Barcelona

Max Verstappen has conceded that Red Bull have “a lot of work to do” following the opening day of track action at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, with the Dutchman explaining the issues that affected his running throughout Friday.

After ending Free Practice 1 in fourth place on the timesheets, Verstappen ended the second hour in sixth place but looked to be struggling for grip at times. The four-time World Champion also reported issues with the balance over the radio.

Asked for his reflections on the day – and whether he had found the performance that he was seeking in high-speed sections – Verstappen responded: “Yeah, but we lose in the high speeds, the low speeds, the medium speeds, it’s pretty much everywhere. The whole day [we were] just lacking grip and feeling with the car and balance, so that’s something that we’ll try to work on.”

The 28-year-old went on to admit that “nothing felt nice” in terms of trying all three tyre compounds, but suggested that this problem was affecting others also, saying: “Every time I’ve been following people there’s no grip.

“The cars are literally drifting around, the tyres are not giving any kind of grip. From our side of course compared to the top guys we struggled a little bit more with balance, but I think no-one had a nice balance out there.”

When quizzed on whether he would be able to fight for the front row in Saturday’s Qualifying, Verstappen answered: “No, for sure not.

“I don’t know where we are at the moment, I guess. I don’t know what happened with Ferrari, but we have a lot of work to do.”

Paul Monaghan, Head of Car Engineering at Red Bull, echoed Verstappen’s sentiment as he acknowledged that the squad still had room for improvement.

“Max was full of controversial radio messages today!” Monaghan commented. “The car was poor in places. It’s fine, I don’t know if it’s that different from anybody else really – it’s not as if we’re miles off. I think he’s identified the very obvious weaknesses we are encountering – it might well be similar to everybody else, and it’s our job to fix it now, or improve it.

“It will be another high-speed challenging circuit – it has four fast corners on it and we have to navigate them! I think if you look at the Qualifying lap, it’s how you distribute your potential. [With] the more sustained running, can we manage the tyres differently and are other people doing different things to us… It doesn’t matter, we’ve got to race on Sunday.”

Monaghan admitted that the team have made “a lot of progress” since racing at Japan's similarly high-speed Suzuka Circuit in March – a weekend that proved challenging for the squad – but added: “Our opposition are not standing still, so our measure is, relatively, 'have we got closer?' I think we have, it’s just maybe we’re not quite close enough yet.”

In terms of how he judges the pace of Red Bull’s rivals so far in Barcelona, Monaghan concluded: “It almost doesn’t matter. I don’t mean to be dismissive – what the others do is not necessarily going to influence us.

“We have to get the best out of our car, see how to operate it best – what the opposition do, I can’t do much with. We can look at deployment patterns and things like that, and we can learn from those guys perhaps.

“We can see what they do with their tyres, how they approach an out-lap, how we approach an out-lap – all of these things we can learn from, but ultimately we have to get the best out of our car from whatever it needs, whatever it demands, and then we’ll see where we are.”