Max Verstappen was happy with his day’s work after completing 89 laps in the RB13 but maintains that reliability is more important than putting in fast lap times.
The young Dutchman was third quickest at the end of Tuesday’s running with a lap time of 1m21.220s, just 1.2 seconds away from Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, who was the fastest on the day.
“We had a very positive day with not too many issues and we’ve done quite a lot of laps so we can be happy,” Verstappen said.
“For us, it’s not about showing how quick we can be at the moment. It’s the first test week and the second day, so it’s much more important to get some mileage in and to check if all the parts are okay.
“We’ll focus on lap time later on. The speed difference compared to the cars from last year is a good step; it’s definitely more enjoyable through the faster corners.”
Despite a lack of on-track action after the lunch hour was over, Red Bull quickly got back into their programs once a few changes were made to the car.
Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin added: “After clearing the niggles we had yesterday, today went very much according to plan.
“We were a little tentative in the morning as it was pretty chilly and a few people were sliding around a bit. Because of that, we focused on short runs and aero mapping.
“We then had a pretty long stop over lunch to make some changes to the car in preparation for what we wanted to achieve this afternoon.
“We knew it would mean taking a hit in terms of track time but we were willing to do that in order to get the information we wanted. And we did that.”
Daniel Ricciardo resumes control of the RB13 on Wednesday.
