Max Verstappen has admitted that Red Bull still has “a bit of work to do” to be in a position to challenge for the win during this weekend’s Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix.
Verstappen has entered this weekend retaining a huge 78-point lead, but he is on a four-race run without a win as Red Bull’s rivals have eradicated its past advantage.
The Dutchman, who is striving to record a fourth consecutive win on home soil, looks to be on the back foot once again against McLaren and Mercedes at Zandvoort.
Verstappen wound up second behind Oscar Piastri in a rain-impacted FP1, while he slipped to fifth behind both McLaren and Mercedes cars in a drier second session.
Based on the evidence of the opening practice hours, Verstappen has conceded that Red Bull is not a match to its main competitors over both the short and long runs.
“FP1 we didn’t get a lot of running in, but in FP2 you can see a little more where you are and yeah, bit too slow on the short run, bit too slow on the long run,” he said.
“So yeah, a bit of work to do, I mean at the moment no clear answer of how to improve that specifically, but we will look into things. A bit too slow, simple as that.”
Verstappen is not shocked by Red Bull’s relative uncompetitiveness, though, as he expressed that it had also been a running trend in the run-up to the summer break.
“It’s where we have been the last few races so it’s not really a surprise,” he proclaimed. “We’ll try to just find a little bit more performance for Sunday.”
Meanwhile, team-mate Sergio Perez, who is under pressure to retain his place at Red Bull, continued to struggle as he completed FP2 languishing down in 12th place.
But while he has concurred with Verstappen’s assessment, Perez has disclosed that Red Bull was conducting tests as it aims to understand the issues it has endured.
“We’ve been testing quite a bit of stuff out there,” Perez revealed.
“I think our day looks a little bit better than it shows in terms of order, but overall I think overall, I did a mistake into Turn 12, I went off so I lost a couple of tenths.
“But I think overall we’ve got some work to do, especially in the long run pace to try to match the people ahead.
“I think we’ve run both cars very differently so I think we’ve got a busy day ahead.”
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