After dominating last weekend’s race in Belgium, the duo had a difficult Friday practice at Zandvoort, with their RB18 not as strong as around Spa-Francorchamps.
Verstappen’s day was not helped by a gearbox problem in the morning session which limited his run, and in the afternoon he could only do better than eighth after struggling with balance problems.
Speaking of the day, both drivers acknowledged that things were far from ideal.
Perez, who finished 12th in the afternoon, said: “I think in general we haven’t been as happy as in Belgium.
“So there are some things that we have to look at and try to pick it all up to be in the game for qualifying.”
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Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18
Photo by: Erik Junius
Verstappen added: “We missed FP1 on the soft tyres. I think on this hard tire you couldn’t really determine the balance because we had so little grip on the tire.
“Then you have a session behind, so we went to FP2 and the balance wasn’t great. But in a one hour session you can’t really change a lot of car.
Asked if he was surprised by the gap to the front, he said: “To be honest driving it, I wasn’t really surprised when I saw that jet lag. So there are a lot of things we can improve. »
After being in a class of its own in Belgium last weekend, Verstappen’s fastest lap in second practice was almost seven tenths of a second slower than the pace-driven Ferrari of title rival Charles Leclerc.
Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has said a double whammy of balance and overheated tires were to blame for the team’s struggles – as he confirmed it was of a problem that affected both cars.
“Today we didn’t have enough grip, the balance wasn’t good enough and the temperatures were too high,” he told Autosport.
“To be honest, Perez had the same issues. So first we have to tune our own car and then we can talk about individual performance.
