Max Verstappen heads into qualifying day at the British Grand Prix with work to do with his RB20.
Although Red Bull looked competitive on the long runs towards the end of FP2, the qualifying simulation on the softs was not great, with Verstappen finishing almost 0.7s slower than pacesetter Lando Norris.
On a second push lap, Verstappen had a moment at Chapel and gave up on it.
“It was okay. It was just a little slide, so I aborted the lap there.
“On the softs it didn’t go so well, in FP2 the medium looked a bit better. So yeah, a bit of work to do.
“We tried of course a few things as well on the car from FP1 to FP2, and we just have to analyse a bit what to do better for tomorrow.”
As usual, plenty of things got tested on Friday and Verstappen will look for the best direction into the weekend. Rain is forecast.
“Yeah, we tried a few things so we now just need to analyse all of that and then that will give us a direction for tomorrow, where of course naturally I think the weather will rain a bit, so we’ll all have to take that into account.”
Sergio Pérez returned to his RB20 for FP2 as Isack Hadjar got to drive it in FP1 as part of the rookie running teams are required to give across the season.
He was P3 on over a single lap, the lead car behind the McLaren. The 6-time race winner looked solid on the long runs, albeit not looking quite as quick as teammate Verstappen on high fuel.
The 34-year-old says work needs to be done to improve the car in certain areas.
“It was a solid session, considering that we lost the whole morning.
“It was good, [the] car is feeling good. I think we need to find some balance, especially in the low-speed, medium-speed. The high-speed feels really nice [in] the car.”
After missing out on first practice, Pérez says it was important not to go down the wrong route regarding set-up in such changeable conditions, both in terms of wind and rain.
“It feels like a very complicated session [in FP2] because there is a lot that comes to you. You’re straight away going to performance and into high fuel.
“It can very easily lead you to the wrong decisions, especially in a track like this when conditions are changing so much, so we just have to be careful in that. We thought it was going to be wet this morning but it wasn’t.
“Anyway, Hadjar did a very good job for the team.”
