General
Verstappen counts on extra power Honda: "In the speedtraps we were slow"
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen finished his first two free practice sessions of the season on Friday evening. They didn't always go smoothly. He spun a few times, made a trip through the gravel pit and was hindered by a broken front wing. His times were not super fast either. It didn't seem good, but what is his own feeling about the day?
According to Verstappen it all went pretty well today. There were no major problems, except for some start-up problems in VT1. "The fuel-flow meter didn't work well, so I had less power, but that was solved after that first run on the hard tire, so outside that spin it was all fine", he says at Formula 1 Café on Ziggo Sport.
Just after that his fast lap on the soft tyre was ruined when his front wing broke off. According to Verstappen that's just one of the reasons why we haven't seen the true speed of the RB16 today.
Honda is going to make a difference?
"With the exit of turn six I just got to that yellow kerb and then the wing broke off on that side, so those last three corners of the track I had a lot of understeer. But that doesn't make a big difference, because I was satisfied with the run before on the medium tyre. Also if you look at the speedtraps we're pretty slow on the straight, so I'm not too worried about it".
With that last remark he probably refers to the knowledge that he drove with relatively less power than the competition. On Saturday he thinks Honda's extra horsepower can make all the difference, closing the gap that arose today. He expects to go for a nice result on Saturday.