Max Verstappen believes Red Bull will be able to compete with Ferrari and Mercedes at the Japanese Grand Prix, after being satisfied with his car in the dry morning session at Suzuka.
The Dutchman, fresh off his victory last Sunday in Malaysia, was only sixth fastest in Practice 1 on Friday but his time was unrepresentative after he was forced to abandon his Supersoft tyre run due to Carlos Sainz crashing into the barrier at the Hairpin.
Neither he nor teammate Daniel Ricciardo would then go out in the afternoon as heavy rain initially delayed the start of the session and with a dry race expected, there was little to learn from running.
From the limited track time, however, the 20-year-old was pleased by what he had and positive about the rest of the weekend.
“I think we are competitive. I think we are quite close to Mercedes and Ferrari,” he declared. “Even though I couldn’t finish my lap with the red flag but long runs seem to be quite good.
“I think Mercedes at the moment are still maybe a little bit faster but we’ll see. Maybe with the warmer conditions again on Sunday that should help us. Luckily the car balance was straight away more or less there so we didn’t need to change that much. It’s a little bit unknown, but it’s OK.”
With the rain that impacted Practice 2 likely to hang around overnight, there is a high chance of a wet final practice and potentially qualifying if it should stay a little longer. The prospect of a wet Saturday is also very tempting to Ricciardo who would see it as a big opportunity for the team.
“Yeah, we have probably more to gain,” he admitted. “Ferrari and Mercedes, everyone expects them, and they always expect to be at the front. Whereas we can be there at times, so any kind of uncertainty or changing of conditions gives us a bit more gamble to take.”
Both drivers also complained at how the need to save wet tyres over a weekend was a barrier to drivers going out and hoped Pirelli and the FIA would consider a change.
Next year, they give us an extra set of intermediates for Fridays but not extremes, so that is why we didn’t run because if we need to use the extreme we want to save it for when it counts in qualifying,” the Australian explained. “It was good some guys ran, but to get all of us running they need to give us a set of extremes for Friday.”
Verstappen added: “For sure we would try to run more if we had another set, so that would be nice if we could have that in the future. Also for the fans, not only us. They are just waiting there, but there was still a lot of water and a lot of rivers so I didn’t want to risk it.”
