Verstappen: Ferrari sticks to us 1’ in a straight line

Present in the Top 3 of the two free driving sessions in Mexico this Friday, Max Verstappen ends the opening day just a tenth from the chronometric reference established by Sebastian Vettel in Free Practice 2. 

Despite this encouraging start, the Dutchman, double title holder at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, remained realistic about his chances for the rest of the weekend. As he anticipated on Thursday, the Batavian believes that Ferrari will be almost unbeatable in qualifying and therefore prefers to focus its attention on optimizing the settings for Sunday. 

« It was a good Friday, said Verstappen as he got out of the car. The car handles well; we tested several things and I was happy with the feeling we got in the end. 

However, we lost too much time compared to the Ferraris in a straight line and we cannot make up for this deficit later given the limited number of turns on the track. They take us a second just on the straight ends. If we wanted to fight for pole position on Saturday, we should have a half-second lead from today. 

So, we have to concentrate on the settings for the race. The soft tire deteriorates a lot, it can do so on a flying lap in qualifying but during the Grand Prix it will not be ideal that's for sure ». 

Verstappen will be almost the only point of reference for Red Bull this Friday evening since his teammate Alexander albon was only able to cover 5 laps in FP2, the most representative free session, before losing control of his RB15 and ending his swerve into the safety barriers of Turn 7.