Max Verstappen is still feeling good about his Dutch Grand Prix chances after Friday Practice.
The home hero has won both races at Zandvoort since the historic circuit returned to the Formula 1 calendar in 2021, and immediately went quickest in the opening session on Friday.
However, in Practice 2, McLaren’s Lando Norris pipped Verstappen by just 0.023s, though it did little to dent the world champion’s confidence.
“I think pretty good,” he said surmising his day.
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“We tried some things on the car. I think FP2 was a little bit more difficult, but I think overall FP2 is really difficult to get a clean lap, there are a lot of cars always around.
“It was just fine. We have a few things that we want to improve and even on the long run, the car was performing quite well, so overall I think there’s quite a bit there,” Verstappen added.
“I still feel good. I think the car has a lot of potential to have a good day again tomorrow, but we just need to finetune a few things and then I’m pretty confident that we can be [up there].”
Despite Red Bull’s domination this season, qualifying has always been more competitive.
And Max believes McLaren and a few other could offer tough competition on Saturday.
“I think they look quick on any tyre,” he said of Norris’ MCL36. “For sure, we know that in qualifying especially a few teams can fight us sometimes.”
“Let’s see how the rest of the weekend goes, with such a close grid we have to be perfect, put in a great lap and qualify where we should so that we can show our race pace.
“Everything will depend on where we qualify tomorrow, if we qualify well, we can stay up front and fight for a good result.”