Max Verstappen was concerned by Red Bull’s performance after ending the first day of practice in Las Vegas a lowly 17th.
The world championship leader’s day was compromised when a red flag disrupted his soft tyre run in second practice. That left him 17th, two seconds off the pace set by Lewis Hamilton.
However even if he had completed the lap Verstappen is doubtful Red Bull would have looked competitive alongside the other front-running teams. “It’s slippery and I think we struggled a lot with making the tyres work, over one lap especially.” he explained.
“The long run started off a bit more competitive but even there I think we need to fine-tune a few things,” Verstappen told the official F1 channel. “But the one-lap pace is quite far off.
“Of course it’s quite unique conditions around here and it’s very cold. But at the end of the day it’s the same for everyone so we need to try and understand what we are doing wrong at the moment.”
The track was very dusty when drivers began their first laps on Thursday. Several of them reported they encountered graining with the soft tyre early in their first runs.
Verstappen said Red Bull’s problems “just feel massively tyre-related.”
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“The balance of the car’s not even that wrong, I think, it’s just we have no grip,” he said. “It’s like driving on ice at the moment.”
Team principal Christian Horner agreed with his drivers’ assessment of their troubles. “It’s tyres and temperatures,” he said. “They’re the critical element.
“I think on the short run we just weren’t in the window with the tyre so we never really got it working. On the long run the car’s working okay and we’ve got some other issues to tidy up there but they look similar to what the others are dealing with. But on the short run we just didn’t get the tyre working.”
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2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix
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