Max Verstappen was pleased with his practice recovery and long run pace on Friday in Mexico.
The Dutchman missed most of the morning session after his rear brakes caught fire upon return to the pits, but made up for lost time in the afternoon.
With both Red Bull’s some way off the single lap pace, indeed Verstappen ended the day in seventh behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India on soft tyres, it was the race simulation that left the teenager optimistic.
“Our race pace was very strong,” he said. “After missing the first free practice almost entirely, I was still working a lot on the car, and finally just before the long run I made a final set-up change and that seemed to work pretty well.”
Both Verstappen and teammate Daniel Ricciardo are targeting an improvement on the supersoft tyres as the area the team needs to work on in the build-up to qualifying with the gap between themselves and main rivals Ferrari a big surprise.
However, Ricciardo admitted he was caught out by the lack of track evolution since last year.
“I expected the grip to be higher after a year and the WEC came here and other categories,” he was quoted by ESPN. “I thought the track would have rubbered in a bit, but it’s still very slippery so it might take a bit more time.
“I think by the end of the weekend on Sunday the last half of the race will be better, but I think we’re going to be fighting the balance from now until the end, it’s just trying to get comfortable with a slippery sort of feeling on track.”
He added progress to address the lack of grip was being made but didn’t expect an optimum solution to be found.
“It’s really tricky to find the right setup in these conditions,” Ricciardo explained. “When it’s low grip you have a bit of understeer and you have a bit of oversteer, so knowing what way to really set the car up is tricky.
“I think we improved it today from the morning but I think there’s still some progress to make, so we’ll prepare for a pretty low grip track tomorrow and try and improve the balance from there.”
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