Photo credit: Red Bull Racing
In the opening practice in Zandvoort, the home hero Max Verstappen topped the timesheets ahead of Alonso and Hamilton. The Dutch driver has improved his time in the second session but later being surpassed for 0.023s by Lando Norris for top spot.
Summing up his sessions, Verstappen comments: “Pretty good, trying some things on the car. I think FP2 was a little more difficult. It was difficult to get a clean lap with a lot of cars always around but it was fine.
“We have a few things that we want to improve. Even on the long run the car was handling quite well so overall think it was quite a good day.”
The Dutchman has showed some concerns during his run but excluded reliability problem explaining the problem was related to finding the right balance in a particular corner.
In conclusion, shares his thoughts on tomorrows’ qualifying:
“I feel good, the car has a lot of potential to have a good day tomorrow. I’m pretty confident we can be ahead.”
On the other side of the Red Bull garage also Sergio Perez reckons the first day back in the car positive. Finishing the first practice for the Dutch Grand Prix fourth quickest, the Mexican improved his time in FP2, but still ending in seventh position with the top 10 covered by just half a second.
“The grid is looking really tight out here once again. But overall it’s been a positive start.”
Regarding tomorrow’s qualifying, Perez also added: “We just have to bring everything and try to get the perfect lap all together to make sure that we qualify where we should and then show our race pace.
“I think it’s all very tight it depends where we are able to perform tomorrow. If tomorrow we are able to have a strong qualifying, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be high up and have a strong result.”
