British Grand Prix – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen says that the RB16 is handling better this weekend, but is lacking some pace versus Mercedes.
Max Verstappen lines up in P3 for Sunday’s race at Silverstone, having been best of the rest behind the dominant Mercedes duo in qualifying. Verstappen finished a second away from pole position, and 0.7 away from Bottas in P2.
Unlike the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, Verstappen says he’s finding the RB16 much more pliable this weekend, but is lacking outright pace.
“It’s predictable at least,” Verstappen said. “I didn’t really have any troubles throughout the whole weekend so that’s good. We just need to find a bit more pace.
”This new kind of the car, the wide car since 2017, they’re really sensitive to the wind. Especially on a track like this which is very open, the wind is very influential. Yesterday at low speed, the wind was not in a very good direction for any of us so that car was really moving around a lot. Today the wind changed into another direction and at low speed the cars actually looked a lot better.
“So it is very powerful, I hope tomorrow that the wind stays a little bit in the direction it was today. That would be a lot more enjoyable to drive.”
Despite being so far away from Mercedes on single lap pace on the Medium tyre compound on Saturday, the irrepressible Dutchman says he thinks he can keep some pressure on them over the race distance.
“The gap is quite big but it’s also no real surprise,” Verstappen said. “They’ve been really dominant all year so far, but still, I’m happy with P3. It gives us a fighting chance for tomorrow and we’ll find out tomorrow what’s going to happen.
“I’m not too worried about the guys behind, I’ll try to do my own race and try to keep a bit of pressure on them.”
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