Verstappen wary of gap to rivals despite ‘good day’ on Friday at Belgian Grand Prix

Max Verstappen shared his satisfaction at maximising Red Bull’s package during Friday's running at the Belgian Grand Prix, but admitted that the sessions also exposed the deficit to their rivals.

The Dutchman got off to a strong start by topping the times in FP1, setting a benchmark of 1m 50.654s which was then beaten by Kimi Antonelli in the second hour of practice, in which Verstappen wound up in third place.

He reported struggling with his gear shifts, labelling them “unbelievable” after he drove wide onto a gravel trap, causing a momentary red flag pause in the action to clear up the stones spread across the track.

Asked to sum up the day as a whole, Verstappen said: “Pretty decent, I think. The balance is there straight away – just fine tuning a little bit with the car, which hopefully unlocks a little bit more pace. Honestly, I think from what we have as a package, it’s been a good day.

“We just focus on ourselves. Honestly, I cannot be disappointed or whatever. It’s been a good day for us.

“I’m not sure how much more there is in there compared to the others, but for me, feeling-wise it’s been alright. In the second practice you see a little bit more what the real gap is probably, but hopefully we can eke out of that a little bit towards Qualifying.”

An additional challenge that Verstappen faced was relearning how to optimise the old specification rear wing, reintroduced by Red Bull after he suffered crashes caused by an updated faulty component in Austria and Great Britain.

While he simply stated that the only change is the wing “opens differently”, the team’s Technical Director Pierre Wache went into more detail, explaining: “Everybody saw the issue that we had in Silverstone. We are trying to reproduce this issue – we understand now, we try to fix the problem and try to bring back the wing as quick as possible because it’s a performance benefit.

“Our first priority is to make sure that the car is safe for the driver and for ourselves, and then we bring a normal activation rear wing that is a little bit down on performance but is able to run on the car.

“I think the balance is clearly far from perfect, which we have to work on, plus some degradation on the long runs that we have to work on. I think it’s a good starting point to improve.”