(Motorsports news) This season, Red Bull went undefeated to Singapore, with the winding and bumpy street circuit billed as the team’s biggest challenge to an unprecedented clean sweep of race wins in 2023. On Friday practice, Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and 2023 dominator Max Verstappen were trapped in seventh and eighth place, seven tenths behind Ferrari’s pacesetter Carlos Sainz, as both drivers were sliding around in their RB19.
Verstappen confessed that Red Bull’s practice pace was poorer than expected, citing a lack of balance. “A little bit worse than expected today,” Verstappen said. “I just had a lot of trouble with the car’s balance. In FP2, we tried a lot of different things.” Some worked, some didn’t, but we never got the car together, so we have a lot to figure out tonight.
“Just a few things we don’t understand, so that’s what we have to look into.” When asked if Ferrari’s pole-winning performance surprised him, Verstappen replied, “Ferrari is very fast, I think we’re just way worse than we expected.” We will, of course, attempt to improve, but there is a significant disparity.”
In reality, Perez had similar difficulty keeping the RB19’s rear end pointed in the right way. He observed that the Milton Keynes team’s issues are primarily tied on extracting one-lap pace from its machinery, with less concern regarding race simulations. However, if the team starts out of position, overtaking will be more difficult on the redesigned Marina Bay layout than on most other tracks.
“I think there are some interesting bits going on that we need to figure out overnight hopefully,” the Mexican continued.”We appear to be struggling with the rear end of the car, particularly in FP2, so there are a lot of things to look at.” We’re hoping to come up with the finest possible setup since we know qualifying is crucial.
“Red Bull expected the Ferrari to be very strong here.” We’re just too far away, so hopefully we’ll be able to cut the gap a little further tomorrow. However, it is a significant difficulty “We’re looking good over a race distance, but that doesn’t mean much around here.” We need to strike a balance in order to be speedy over a single lap.”
