Max Verstappen completed 127 laps in today’s testing session, but that could have been more had it not have been for a battery issue that caused a halt to Red Bull’s testing programme. He believes the car is "faster than last years" despite the issue.
Last season Red Bull were let down due to reliability issues but after day one of testing, Verstappen seemed confident that there won’t be a repeat of this in 2018.
The 20 year old said: “We did a lot of laps, that was very important to get the mileage on the car.
“It was a good day. We had one small battery problem so we had to change that, it always takes a little time, but afterwards it was all good again."
“The most important thing was to get a lot of laps under our belt, see how the car was behaving so we managed to do that.”
Max went on to say “The car is definitely faster than last year so that is positive.”
Problems struck the RB14 after lunch on lap 114. The car spent a considerable amount of time in the garage before returning 1 hour before the chequered flag.
In Melbourne last year, Verstappen finished 5th but team mate Daniel Ricciardo retired from the race due to a fuel cell issue.
With lights out just 2 and a half weeks away, Red Bull are likely to perform longer runs to ensure the car is more reliable to push them closer to Ferrari and Mercedes.
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