Max Verstappen had his most difficult day in quite some time as he had numerous adventures through the grass and gravel on the opening day of running ahead of the Imola Grand Prix.
He was looking fast in FP1 through the first sector but had separate moments at turns 12 and the turn 14/15 chicane on different laps to leave him down in P5.
The Dutchman was right in the front group at the start of FP2 on the mediums. However, he massively struggled in the middle sector on softs as he could manage P7, 0.541s away from pacesetter Charles Leclerc.
The three-time defending World Champion did not hide his displeasure when speaking after FP2 as the long runs looked poor as well.
“A difficult day. Just difficult to get a good balance and just not really feeling comfortable in the car, moving around a lot.
“It’s very easy to lose the car, so we have a few things that we have to look at because today definitely…. just bad, just not comfortable.
“Also the long run was really bad, so definitely a few things that we have to improve if we want to be competitive tomorrow.”
Verstappen was already on the back foot in Miami as Red Bull struggled to find a good balance there.
He is fully aware of the task ahead of them in FP3 to turn the weekend around, otherwise there is a good chance his championship lead will be cut quite substantially come Sunday afternoon.
“I guess it can’t be worse than what we had today, right?
“We’ll look at a few things that we can do better for tomorrow. But yeah, it looks a bit like the others took a bit of a step forward. And from our side just a bad day.’”
On one of his soft runs, the Dutchman came across Lewis Hamilton at turn 6 as the Brit was slow to move out of the way. He showed his displeasure with a hand gesture.
Verstappen was not too fussed afterwards, instead he was focusing on Red Bull’s serious lack of pace.
“It’s not the first time. You try to, of course, always stay calm about it. But yeah, it happened again.
“But at the other end, I don’t want to really talk about it too much, because that’s not our issue.
“Today we were just severely off the pace and that we need to fix.”
Sergio Perez was one place ahead and one place behind his teammate in the practice sessions on Friday to confirm Red Bull’s struggles. P7 and P8 in FP2 leaves the team with a big mountain to climb over the remainder of the weekend.
Nonetheless, the Mexican remained far more optimstic than his teammate as he looked ahead to Saturday and Sunday, believing the pace is in the car if they can sort out the set-up and balance issues.
“I think we’ve got some work to do overnight. [We’ll] try to pick up the best bits because I think everything follows with the performance running and also the high fuel running. I think there is some tidying up to do there.
“I think if we’re able to pick up some nice balance over qualifying, we will be in a strong position for race day. So yeah, optimstic for it.”
Regarding track conditions, Perez declared it to be tricky. A curve ball is coming tomorrow with the wind direction set to completely change, too.
“I think they’ve been tricky at times with the wind being pretty strong, and we’re expecting a bit of a change going into qualifying tomorrow. It will be an interesting one.”
