Max Verstappen dominated Friday by topping both practice sessions but is not ruling a Ferrari or Mercedes comeback heading into the remainder of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend.
The Dutchman took advantage as Red Bull emerged as the surprise team to beat, ending the day with the best time of 1m43.362s and leading the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas by a tenth of a second.
However, a mistake during the final minutes of second practice would see his day finish in the wall at Turn 1. Explaining what happened, he said: “I locked up and I still tried to make the corner but tried to play it safe and take the exit road.
“As soon as I turned right I had a tank-slapper and I lost the rear and went into the barrier.
“It’s broken (the car) but we have new parts and luckily it was nothing for the race so it’s all good.”
His error was one of many on Friday with over 100 yellow flag disruptions and two red flags, after crashes for Sergio Perez and Jolyon Palmer at Turn 8.
With finding a clean lap so difficult then, Verstappen is confident there is more pace to come from the car.
“I think the whole day has been really positive, except the last lap, everything else was working really good,” he claimed.
“So from that point I felt very good in the car even though, I think, in my short runs in second practice, I couldn’t really take the maximum out of it because of traffic and yellow flags. So we can be quite happy.
“To be first with not an ideal lap, first of all, I went out of the garage and had yellow flags, then a Virtual Safety Car so you can’t warm up your tyres like you want to. So to be up there is very positive.”
When asked why Red Bull appear so strong on pace, the youngest Grand Prix winner in F1 history would put the apparent improvement in competitiveness down to progress made with the RB13 in recent weeks.
“The preparation we did at the factory was very good and the car was working straight away on the track so that means the correlation is good,” Verstappen said.
“From the engine side, we had an update so that’s always a positive.”
However, Verstappen did not rule out a Ferrari and Mercedes fight back, after a quiet day by the top two team’s standards.
“You always have to be careful. We know that in qualifying Mercedes will turn up their power,” he said. “To be ahead on a Friday is always positive, we’ll see tomorrow, to stay there will be difficult but at least we have a better pace than normal.”