Red Bull far from the top on Friday in Monza
Max Verstappen finished eight tenths behind George Russell, Liam Lawson over a second. For now, the pre-race hypotheses of a Red Bull potentially competitive in Monza have yet to find foundation on the track.
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The Dutchman commented on a Friday that saw him on track only in FP2 since in FP1 he gave way to Ayumu Iwasa: “Today it was difficult to find the right car setup and we will have to work on it for tomorrow to improve the lap time a bit more. Our gap from the leaders is still significant, but I hope we can reduce it slightly in qualifying on a single lap. Hopefully, we get even closer in the race and things work better in the long runs, although this is harder to predict. We are evaluating what we can do overnight on the car to see if we can make some positive changes and try to achieve the right balance in the corners.”
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Liam Lawson pointed out that very simply the RB22 lacks aerodynamic downforce: “It was a productive day. Today we focused a lot on long runs, especially in FP2. We did many laps, but we didn’t do many short sessions, so I imagine tomorrow we will focus on those. Compared to the leaders, here we are definitely not able to match what they can do in terms of aerodynamic downforce, but today we took some positive lessons and tomorrow we will try to see what we can do.”
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