Max Verstappen and Red Bull are confident there is no Singapore hangover after a strong start in Suzuka ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.
The Dutchman was fastest in both Friday sessions, heading Carlos Sainz in the opening hour of running and Charles Leclerc in the latter outing.
It’s a return to form for Red Bull who proved surprisingly uncompetitive a week ago on the streets of Singapore, on a track they always knew would be difficult.
However, they weren’t prepared for it to be quite as tough as it proved, with Verstappen in fifth as the team’s best-placed driver.
“It seems like we had a strong day, on short runs, long runs,” Verstappen said.
“There’s a lot of degradation on this track, so it will be quite tough I think on tyres in the race. But so far, I think we had a good start to the weekend.
“It looks like it’s all a bit tight behind me, between Ferrari, McLaren [are] close, so we’ll have a look,” he added.
“At the end of the day, we just focus on ourselves and try to optimise our performance. If we do that, I’m confident that we’ll fight for pole.”
Chrisitan Horner was similarly optimistic after his team was on the pace from the moment it rolled out of the garage.
“It’s still early days but certainly, Max laid down a statement of intent with his first flying lap of the weekend, which is truly impressive,” said Horner.
“But on all three compounds of tyres, including the development tyre we tried, the car seemed to be performing reasonably well.
“So I think we’ve got a good starting point. Inevitably it will converge as we go through the sessions, but I think we should hopefully have a strong car here this weekend.”
Verstappen had proved 0.626s faster than Sainz in opening practice, that advantage effectively halving in FP2 when Leclerc was just 0.320s back.
The spread from front to back also condensed; a total of 1.6s covered all 20 cars at the end of Free Practice 2, with 16 of the 20 cars within a second of one another.
While Verstappen was fastest in both sessions, Sergio Perez was 11th in Free Practice 1, improving to ninth in the day’s later running.
“This morning we were a bit off balance on our side,” the Mexican explained.
“I think we have some pretty good understanding of the direction we need to take.
“Certainly, things are looking a lot better than they did last weekend, which is positive.
“ I look forward to qualifying well tomorrow, because degradation seems to be quite high around this place, especially with the hot temperatures we are expecting.”
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