Max Verstappen believes it’s “hardly possible” that the handling on his Red Bull Formula 1 car can get worse than it was in practice at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Verstappen laboured in fifth place in the opening practice session and slipped back to seventh in the second hour, 0.541s behind Ferrari’s pacesetting Charles Leclerc.
The Dutchman was unsettled behind the wheel and experienced trips across the gravel at Acqua Minerale when his car bottomed out and also the penultimate corner.
Despite Red Bull introducing several upgrades this weekend – including a revised floor – Verstappen was not hiding his disgruntlement with his RB20’s balance at Imola.
“A difficult day. Just difficult to get a good balance and just not really feeling comfortable in the car, moving around a lot,” Verstappen said.
“It’s very easy to lose the car, so we have a few things that we have to look at because today definitely…. just bad, just not comfortable.
“Also the long run was really bad, so definitely a few things that we have to improve if we want to be competitive tomorrow.
“Today we were just severely off the pace that we need to fix.”
When asked whether he was optimistic Red Bull could turn it around overnight, Verstappen remarked: “I guess it can’t be worse than what we had today, right?
“We’ll look at a few things that we can do better for tomorrow. But yeah, it looks a bit like the others took a bit of a step forward. And from our side just a bad day.”
Meanwhile, Verstappen made his frustration evident in FP2 when he gesticulated at Lewis Hamilton as the Mercedes driver impeded him at the Villeneuve Chicane.
“It’s not the first time,” Verstappen asserted. “You try to, of course, always stay calm about it. But yeah, it happened again.
“But at the other end, I don’t want to really talk about it too much, because that’s not our issue today.”
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