Max Verstappen faces a big test this weekend if he's to overcome a ten place grid penalty for the Belgian Grand Prix, after Red Bull decided to use a fifth engine of the season in his car this weekend.
Verstappen is hoping that the long, high speed Spa-Francorchamps circuit will give him the best opportunity to overcome his compromised starting position and still allow him to challenge for points and a podium.
However a win might be too much to ask for this week, as McLaren were able to snatch a 1-2 victory last week in Hungary and were again the top two cars in Friday's second practice session, with Verstappen third quickest.
The Red bull was just two thousandths of a second behind Oscar Piastri but lagged Lando Norris by two tenths, with Verstappen admitting that he had work to do if he was to challenge the papaya players on Sunday.
"We tried quite a few things today, tweaking and testing the car," he told the media in the paddock after the end of Friday's track activity.
"Hopefully all the changes that we made will come together, especially as I will be starting near the back for the race because of the engine penalty," he acknowledged.
"It's always very tricky to find the right balance when you are trying a few things to see what is better.
"It's typically Spa, where of course you have sector one and three where you want the top speed and then a very long middle sector where you want a cornering speed.
"We started off quite positively today and have some things to work on from FP2, so there are a few things to look at," he continued. "We’ll look at it on the data and analyse the day in debrief.
"We will try to optimise this as much as we can," he pledged. "Naturally you always want a good qualifying, but the race is our focus."
Verstappen could use some help from his team mate Sergio Perez this weekend, with the Mexican solidly in the top ten in both first and second practice today although he was disappointed not to be quicker.
Verstappen could use some help from his team mate Sergio Perez this weekend, with the Mexican solidly in the top ten in both first and second practice today although he was disappointed not to be quicker.
Red Bull faced a long night ahead after Perez admitted that the “unknowns” heading into tomorrow regarding both the best set-up for his car and the weather could make for a very “interesting” weekend.
"During the practice sessions we have been playing around with the set-up, but haven’t been able to fully extract everything out of the car yet," he explained.
"The team got plenty of information from today with both cars running quite different and there’s a lot to analyse for tomorrow’s strategy.
It is going to be an interesting weekend coming up. Tomorrow’s qualifying could be potentially wet and Sunday is looking dry at the moment. Going in to the weekend there are still a lot of unknowns, so we’ll need to be able to adapt."
Red Bull still have a commanding 51 point lead in the constructors championship over McLaren, but need both drivers to score well to ensure McLaren doesn't go into the summer break with the edge in terms of momentum.
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