Max Verstappen admitted Red Bull have no clear answer on how to improve their pace at the Dutch Grand Prix after being outperformed by Mercedes and McLaren in Friday practice. Verstappen leads the world championship from McLaren’s Lando Norris by 78 points with 10 rounds of the season remaining but arrives at his home race on his longest winless streak since 2020, having gone four grands prix without a victory.
The Dutchman has won on all three of his previous appearances at Zandvoort but was only able to finish fifth in second practice on Friday, with Mercedes and McLaren occupying the top four places as George Russell set the pace for the Silver Arrows.
In FP1, we didn’t really get a lot of running in but I guess in FP2 you could see a little bit more where you are, Verstappen said. A bit slow on the short run, a bit slow on the long run. So a bit of work to do.
At the moment no clear answer of how to improve that specifically but we’ll look into things. Just a bit slow, as simple as that.
Verstappen appeared to be cruising towards a fourth successive drivers’ title when he won four of the first five races of the season, but since then McLaren have consistently been able to match or better Red Bull’s pace, while Mercedes won three of the final four races before the sport’s summer break.
Rain limited representative running in first practice on Friday, but after a more informative second session, Verstappen insisted he wasn’t surprised by the RB20’s lack of performance.
It’s where we have been the last few races so it’s not really a surprise, he added.
We’ll try to just find a little bit more performance for Sunday.
If Norris is going to start putting serious title pressure on Verstappen, he will want to take points away from the Red Bull driver at the Dutchman’s home event. Norris was only 0.025s ahead of Verstappen but will be buoyed by McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri’s quick time in second practice, which was two tenths quicker.
I am optimistic, but I have no idea whether it is working or not or how it’s performing at the minute.
Both Russell and Hamilton praised the improvements made to the Mercedes car, with Russell noting the car feels more alive and Hamilton expressing how much better they understand the car now.
It seems like the battle between McLaren and Mercedes will be a close one at the Dutch Grand Prix, and fans can expect an exciting race weekend ahead.