Max Verstappen says Red Bull will be testing “a lot of new parts” this weekend in Silverstone for the first of two British Grands Prix.
Red Bull looks to be Formula 1’s second quickest team, just ahead of Racing Point, but remains some way off the dominant Mercedes W11 – a gap which has grown since last year.
The RB16 is a “decent car” but isn’t “behaving as expected” according to team boss Christian Horner, but Verstappen hopes a number of updates, which will be tested on Friday, will help to change that.
“Every car is hard to drive on the limit,” said the Dutchman, who has struggled this year, spinning multiple times and even crashing on the pre-formation lap last time out in Hungary. “It’s just sometimes when it becomes a little bit unpredictable – that is the tricky bit.
“Honestly, in the race on Sunday I was pretty happy with the balance I had but it’s just a bit too slow at the moment. We will try to improve that.
“We are still learning. We are bringing a lot of new parts to the car – different parts to see what works, what doesn’t and where we can still improve – this is of course, from one week to the other, is not going to be solved. You need a bit more time for that.
“We are working on it and we will just find out by trying it on track [to see] if we are heading into the right direction.”
Verstappen insists he’s not angered by Red Bull’s pace compared to Mercedes, and can only do his best each weekend in the hope the team can improve and take the fight to their chief rival sooner or later.
“I go into a weekend where I always try to do the best I can. Of course I would like to come to the weekend and
know that you’re going to fight for victories every weekend but at the moment that is not the case. We just try to learn and try to improve.
“Hopefully towards the end of the year or next year we can be in that position. Of course, it’s not going to be easy. They work very hard at Mercedes as well but if we can make it difficult for them then that would be really nice but it’s not that I am going to sit here frustrated and be angry about it all. That doesn’t mean that sometimes I get a bit upset or whatever but that’s [how it is ] at the end of the day because I want to win and I want to improve.
“I think everybody at the team has that – we all want to win. It’s good that we are all pushing each other hard so that’s nothing negative because if I would just sit here and say ‘I don’t care’, just rock up to the track and just do my job and go back home then I think that would be the wrong attitude.”
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