After a challenging Friday, Red Bull driver Max Verstappen tried to explain the large gap to Ferrari in practice at the Singapore GP, and admitted things were worse than expected for the team.
Both Red Bull cars reported problems with rear grip as Sergio Perez ended the second practice session seventh, with Verstappen in eighth. Ferrari were quickest in both FP1 and FP2.
“Maybe it was unexpected today,” Verstappen told F1 TV after FP2.
“Yeah, just struggling a lot with the balance of the car. We tried quite a few things in FP2, some work, some didn’t. Never really got the car together.
“There’s quite a few things to figure out tonight, basically. [There’s] just a few things that we don’t understand, so that’s what we have to look into.
“Ferrari is very fast, I think we were just way worse than we expected. I will try to of course improve and it’s quite a big gap.”
Similar problems for Sergio Perez
Just as Verstappen struggled, Perez was heard on team radio bemoaning the fact that couldnt find any grip when accelerating out the corners during FP2.
“I think there’s so many interesting debates going on, that we need to figure it out overnight,” Perez told F1 TV.
“We seem to be a struggling quite a bit with the rear end of the car, especially in FP2 so plenty of things to look at and hopefully we can come up with the best possible set up because we know that qualifying is very, very important
We didn’t expect the Ferrari to be very strong around here. We are just too far away. So yeah, hopefully tomorrow we are able to close the gap a bit more. But yeah, I do expect to challenge.
“I think the main thing is to make sure we are able to improve the balance as the moment we are far off.”
