Verstappen not worried by Ferrari's Friday pace

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Max Verstappen was feeling confident and relaxed after the end of Friday's free practice sessions at Monza ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, despite missing out on the top spot in both FP1 and FP2.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was quickest in the first session, while the Monegasque's team mate Carlos Sainz set the quickest time in FP2, a tenth and a half quicker than Verstappen could manage in second

Verstappen admitted that his rivals were looking good at their home circuit - a venue where Verstappen himself has never finished on the podium - but still felt that he and Red Bull had what it takes to score another win on Sunday.

Read also: Sainz keeps Ferrari on top in second practice at Monza

“The car was quite good,” Verstappen told the media after second practice. “I was just trying a few things from the car from FP1 to FP2 to understand if you could do things better.

“Some worked, some didn’t," he continued, noting that the focus for today was on ensuring they had good race penalty to overcome another five-place grid penalty for taking a new engine this weekend.

“If you look at the long runs, I think we look quite good, and that’s of course the most important for the race," he said. "Just general long-run practice of course with the little penalty we have. Everything seems to work quite well.

“There’s still a few things we can do better, but of course Monza is not like Spa in terms of track layout, it’s low downforce” he pointed out. "

"[Ferrari] look good, but I’m not worried about it. We still have a few things to finalise," he added. "We never expected it to be like Spa, but if we can find a way - even if it’s halfway of Spa - then I think we have a good chance."

Verstappen's team mate Sergio Perez also has a grid drop this weekend, again due to taking an extra engine. As it's his first over the allowed limit for the season, he gets a ten place demotion on Sunday.

He was only sixth fastest at the end of FP2, but again his focus was not on straight-line qualifying speed at this point in the weekend.

“We have been playing around with the set-up, exploring different directions, so I think all in all we have pretty good information going forward," he said.

"We have used different downforce levels as well, so we have plenty of data for us to review tonight which is quite promising.

"We managed to complete a very solid programme today and we are fairly comparable to Max’s car, there are just a couple of differences," he added. "The main thing will be the race pace and how the tyres last around this track.

"I am looking forward to tomorrow, but mainly Sunday. Overtaking will be hard, but I think the degradation looks promising.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.