Red Bull had been hoping to move on from last week's horror show in Baku and take back control in this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix, but neither Max Verstappen not Sergio Perez had the start to the weekend they wanted.
Perez - who crashed out of last week's week's race on the penultimate lap while vying for second place - was only eighth fastest at the end of Friday's practice at Marina Bay, while Verstappen was down in P15 and almost 1.3s off the pace.
“Today was difficult," Verstappen admitted. "We didn’t have the grip that we would have liked on the tyres, so I felt like we were sliding a lot more than usual.
"This caused us particular issues in FP2, which wasn’t really a positive session for us," he acknowledged. "It was more about the general grip of the tyres.
Singapore is not one of Red Bull's strongest track. In an otherwise utterly dominant 2023 season, this was the one venue where Red Bull came away without a win after Carlos Sainz took victory for Ferrari.
At the time the team blamed that on the car's problems on the bumpy street circuit. The circuit has been extensively resurfaced for this year's racing and Verstappen felt that was less of an issue today.
“I’m not really struggling with the bumps or the kerbs, just the general grip,” he told the official F1 channel after the end of FP2.. “So again we have to look at the the trade-offs between the two.
"We are going to have to go back and analyse the data and see what we can do to optimise the performance with the car and the tyres so we can improve ahead of qualifying."
Red Bull often struggles on Fridays, but frequently comes on strong when it comes to Saturday once the team back in the UK has run simulation tests overnight at the team base in Milton Keynes.
But in recent races that's not happened. Nor have the upgrades that the team has brought to the RB20 helped them get back on pace: while Perez looked better in Baku, Verstappen was still suffering.
Perez was once again looking the stronger of the pair this weekend, but he was still far from happy with the situation that they found themselves in.
"Our performance has taken us a little by surprise," Perez conceded. “I think we improved a little bit from FP1, but we are still lacking quite a lot of balance.
"It is quite difficult out there to put a lap together and it’s not looking great at the moment," he continued. "We have some work to do overnight because we are quite far off.
"We will see what we are able to do," he added. "We are nearly a second off the pace, so we need quite a big change to come through.
"It could be quite a tough weekend, but we will work hard to ensure we can compete."
After last week's result, Red Bull head into Singapore 20 points behind McLaren in the constructors’ championship having lost the lead, although Verstappen remains 59 points ahead of Norris in the drivers’ standings.
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