After dominating the last Belgian Grand Prix with absolute superiority, the current leader of the drivers’ championship did not have the best possible start in his home race, the Dutch Grand Prix, since he first suffered a breakdown in FP1 and later he failed to get past eighth place in FP2 .
The Dutch driver changed the engine at Spa-Francorchamps and that gave him extra speed that was key to making his comeback in the race, but that became a concern when his car stalled a few minutes into Free Practice 1.
After missing the first practice session due to a gearbox failure in his RB18, Max Verstappen returned to the track almost blindly to play Free Practice 2 in front of his fans, but contrary to expectations, he failed to score the best friday time. In fact, he finished eighth, 0.697 seconds behind Charles Leclerc, who led the standings.
As soon as he got out of his car and with quite contrary feelings, the Red Bull driver explained his strange day on Friday at his home weekend in Zandvoort, in which finally missing the first practice session marked a before and after.
“I had to miss FP1 and I think with those few laps we did on the harder tire we couldn’t really work on the balance of the car, because we had so little grip.
“So we got to FP2 and the balance wasn’t very good. But in a one-hour session you can’t really change the car much. So we tried to complete the program with what we had,” he added.
However, the Dutchman is still not ruled out for the fight for pole position and for victory, which would make him increase an advantage that at the moment already seems almost definitive in the fight for the Formula 1 drivers’ title in 2022. .
“Obviously that was not great today, but now we have time to investigate the data and of course we will try to be more competitive,” Verstappen concluded.
At the moment, the Red Bull driver leads the general classification with a total of 284 points, well ahead of his teammate, a Sergio Pérez who has 191 and in the Belgian GP he was ahead of Charles Leclerc ( 186 units), in the second position.
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