Max Verstappen isn’t concerned after failing to top either of the two Thursday practice sessions for the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Red Bull driver suspects rival teams probably “turned up the engine” to gain laptime.
In the opening session of the day, RB’s Daniel Ricciardo was the surprise P1 finisher, with Verstappen 0.369s adrift in sixth.
Then in the more representative nighttime set second practice, Lewis Hamilton led a Mercedes 1-2 with the seven-time World Champion’s 1:30.374s tour of the Bahrain International Circuit 0.477s clear of Verstappen, who once again finished sixth.
The reigning champion admits there are a few set-up issues that Red Bull needs to work on overnight, but made the assumption some of the rivals around him may have turned up the dial with their respective power units ahead of the all-important qualifying session on Friday.
“Maybe some people around us already turned up the engine a bit in terms of top speed,” he claimed.
“But we just focus on ourselves and I think from today there were a few little balance issues from front to rear. Nothing big, it’s just about trying to find that sweet spot, especially around here with the rough tarmac.
“That’s what we’ll try to focus on a little bit more for tomorrow.”
Verstappen doesn’t believe that all of the runners in and around Red Bull’s standing in practice turned up their engines, but admittedly believes “a few did.”
With regards to Red Bull’s progress this weekend the Dutchman said the team isn’t “too far away” from finding the alleged “sweet spot” and is balancing his expectations between what he anticipates to be a close qualifying session and making the RB20 race ready via the all-important long runs in final practice tomorrow.
“At the end of the day you also just want to focus a bit on the long run because that’s where the car really needs to work, Verstappen said.
“Of course, qualifying is important, but we need to make sure that the car is in good shape for the race.
“I’m not too worried about the gap to P1 [in practice], but it’s gonna be very close, in qualifying.
“The long run [today], I was a bit happy about that, but again, also there are a few little things that we can do better.”
Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez, finished in 12th and 10th in FP1 and FP2 respectively.
The Mexican driver was focussing on the mechanical balance of the RB20 today as he too shares Verstappen’s preference for developing the car to cope with long race runs, all the while knowing that competitiveness over a single lap will be tight ahead of Friday’s qualifying, following Mercedes’ 1-2 in FP2.
“We had a lot of people talking that we were a second ahead and stuff like that and I was just laughing at them because I knew things are a lot closer,” Perez said.
“They [Mercedes] are looking very competitive and it’s going to be a very tight battle tomorrow.”
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