Red Bull is facing “quite a challenge” after what Max Verstappen called a “worse than expected” Friday at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Before this weekend, the reigning champions, who have won every race so far in 2023, admitted the streets of Marina Bay could pose the biggest threat to completing the perfect season.
And in Practice, those concerns were certainly justified as Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen only managed seventh and eighth respectively, seven-tenths off the pace set by Ferrari.
“It was worse than expected today,” Verstappen stated post-session. “Yeah, I’m just struggling a lot with the balance of the car.
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“We tried quite a few things in FP2, some worked, and some didn’t. We never really got the car together so it’s quite a few things to figure out tonight.
“I will try to improve it, of course, but it’s quite a big gap. Ferrari is very fast, but we’re just way worse than we expected.”
Teammate Perez agreed, noting how Red Bull’s slight weakness over a single lap this year is exaggerated in Singapore.
“I think there are some interesting bits going on that we need to figure out overnight, hopefully,” said the Mexican.
“We seem to be struggling quite a bit with the rear end of the car, especially in FP2. So plenty of things to look at and, hopefully, we can come up with the best possible setup because we know qualifying is very important.
“Over a race distance we’re looking good,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t count for much around here, so we need to find the balance to be quick over one lap.
“We did expect the Ferrari to be very strong around here. We’re just too far away so, hopefully, tomorrow we’ll be able to close the gap a bit more. But yeah, I do expect quite a challenge.”