Max Verstappen is confident of landing a third consecutive pole position for his home Dutch Grand Prix following a degree of fine-tuning with his Red Bull.
After comfortably topping the first practice session at the Zandvoort circuit by almost three-tenths of a second ahead of Fernando Alonso in his Aston Martin, Verstappen did not have it all his own way come the second session.
After a trundle across the gravel at one stage following an error, the two-time F1 champion had to settle for second best behind the McLaren of Lando Norris by just 0.023secs.
Verstappen, who still declared the day “pretty good”, added: “We tried some things on the car. FP2 was a little bit more difficult but it was difficult to get a clean lap as there were a lot of cars around, but it was fine.
“We have a few things we want to improve but even on the long run the car was handling quite well, so overall it was quite a good day.
“The car has a lot of potential, we just need to fine-tune a few things, and then I’m pretty confident we can be ahead.”
As for that error from Verstappen with his gravel excursion, he naturally played it down.
“I was a bit too close to the car ahead, said Verstappen, who can equal Sebastian Vettel’s record of nine consecutive victories by taking the chequered flag on Sunday.
“But I still wanted to see if I could break later. As soon as you have the oversteer, you don’t want to spin or whatever, so you just go across the gravel trap, but it was all quite under control.”
Spurred on by the ‘Orange Army’ hordes, Verstappen conceded that his fans appeared to be “having a bit of a party out there” which he conceded was “incredible to see”.
As for team-mate Sergio Perez, it was another tough day in the RB19 for the Mexican as he was almost half a second down in both sessions, finishing only seventh quickest in the more representative FP2.
“The grid is looking really tight out there again,” said Perez.
Ahead of qualifying, he added: “We just have to bring everything and try to put the perfect lap together, to make sure we qualify where we should, and then show our race pace.”
As to his own race pace, he said: “It all depends on whether we are able to perform in qualifying. If we are able to have a strong qualifying, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be high up and have a strong result.”
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