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In a rare moment, Max Verstappen has confessed that the day was quite difficult for him as he tries to gain confidence in the Red Bull and extract more lap time from the car. The Dutch driver is in an intense scenario where he knows his car is not in the same league as the frontrunners, and hence every tenth needs to be extracted to get the best result.
This approach has more or less worked for Max Verstappen in the first two races as the driver continues to try and limit the damage to the championship leader in terms of points. After the first two rounds, the driver is only 8 points behind his rival. In general, Max Verstappen has been vocal about how the car is just slower than the rivals, but he has always been confident about getting the best from it.
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On Friday, however, Max Verstappen was not really happy with where he was with the car as well. With the second free practice session getting more or less red-flagged due to multiple stoppages, the Red Bull driver didn't get much opportunity to dial down the car and get it in a window where more can be extracted from it.
After FP2, the driver was a measly P8, more than half a second behind the benchmark time. Looking back at the day, the driver told Sky Sports:
"It was quite chaotic for everyone out there with all the red flags. Today has been quite difficult for me. We tried a lot of different things with the car but it seems like a lot of things are not really clicking at the moment, so it's quite difficult to put the lap down."
He added:
"You need a lot of confidence and commitment around here. At the moment, I don't feel like I can use that so I still have quite a bit of work to do."
Max Verstappen's teammate on his first run at Red Bull
Max Verstappen's teammate Yuki Tsunoda is making his Red Bull debut this weekend in a car that has been a struggle to tame. The Japanese driver had a decent first practice session where he was amongst the top 10 early on as well. Max Verstappen was questioned about Yuki Tsunoda's first day of running a Red Bull, to which he said:
"I think he started off pretty well in FP1 then FP2 was chaotic for everyone. We have a lot of homework to do from our side to focus on the car but I think everything went quite well."
Qualifying is going to be the crucial test for everyone involved, as it is only at that time that we can truly ascertain where each team is in the pecking order.
