The free practice sessions of the Japanese Grand Prix once again highlighted the crisis that Red Bull is going through at this start of the season, both with four-time world champion Max Verstappen and with Isack Hadjar, in his first year as a driver for the Milton Keynes team. While the Dutchman did not go beyond 7th place achieved in FP1, the Franco-Algerian achieved his ‘best’ personal performance also in the same session with the 13th time, then remaining stuck in 15th position in FP2.
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A weekend that started uphill for the former Racing Bulls driver, who commented on his first track activity in the Japanese weekend like this: “Today was not our best day, we struggled with balance and grip in both sessions and this made it difficult to put together the laps we wanted. In FP2 we made a step forward in feeling with the car, but we remained a bit behind on lap times. I don’t feel comfortable in the car as I would like, but I’m confident that before tomorrow we’ll be able to change things and put ourselves in a better condition for qualifying”.
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Hopes of being able to make progress that Paul Monaghan, Red Bull Technical Director also emphasized in an interview with the official F1 website: “You can see from our pace that the cars are not performing to the standards we set for ourselves, as well as the standard that Max has set for himself. We have identified some things that are wrong, which is good because we have the opportunity to correct them. The problem now is how to correct them. There are some issues related to certain subtleties. Will we be able to fix them in a short time? I don’t know, but you’ll notice it. The car is what it is now. Now we need to identify what’s wrong, understand, fix it and be faster. It’s a small challenge for us”.
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