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Max Verstappen is not entirely confident that Red Bull's long-run pace will hold up at the F1 Japanese GP. The race weekend was majorly disrupted due to rain on Friday and due to the teams being forced to sit out of FP2. Due to this, teams have done a few sporadic race runs that have not been entirely indicative.
Having said that, there was one thing that did stand out and that was the fact that Ferrari in the hands of Charles Leclerc looked very impressive. Max Verstappen's lap times were consistently slower than what Leclerc was doing but since the stint was much shorter and it's hard to make conclusions with variables like fuel loads and power modes not available, it's hard to have a definitive idea of where the teams stand.
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In all of this, Max Verstappen admitted that while starting the race on pole position was a positive, he wasn't sure about the race pace. During the driver's press conference, he said:
“Yeah, I mean, I cannot look inside the Ferrari garage to see why that is. But it’s quite obvious that then in the long run they seem quite competitive. So, yeah, I mean, we’ll see tomorrow, of course, why that is or if it actually is the case like that. I’m just not very happy with myself, you know, with how my long run was. So then, actually, of course, everyone else looks a bit better.”
Max Verstappen on potential changes the team could make to the car
The driver also revealed that there were certainly a few things that Red Bull could do and will try to alleviate the long-run issues, but it was very limited under the parc ferme conditions.
Once a setup is used in qualifying, the teams cannot make major changes to it as the cars are under parc ferme. Hence, Red Bull is not in a position to make too drastic a change to the cars. Elaborating on what is possible and what isn't for the team, Max Verstappen said:
“From our side, yeah, I have some ideas of what we have to look into to make tomorrow better, and that’s also what we already changed after FP3. So hopefully that will be better for tomorrow. I mean, our race pace is still not too bad, but it’s not how I have been feeling in some of the races this year, last year, as comfortable, let’s say, like that. But hopefully, with the changes that we made, it will be better."
He added:
“I think, so far, I haven’t been happy with my long runs. I think the pace wasn’t what I would have liked. So it’s a bit of a question mark going into tomorrow because, looking at the long runs, especially Ferrari, they look very comfortable. So maybe they were not so quick over one lap today, but they were definitely fast in the long run. So we’ll have to wait and see how that will evolve tomorrow in the race.”
Max Verstappen will certainly have a cushion in the race in case Ferrari is a contender because both drivers did not have a great qualifying session. Carlos Sainz will start the race in P4, while Charles Leclerc will be in P8. It remains to be seen if the Red Bull driver will get challenged in the race on Sunday.
