Red Bull on the back foot: ‘A lot of work to do’

Max Verstappen and Alex Albon were far from happy with the performance of their Red Bull cars in Friday practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Tipped to challenge his team strongly by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff on a track that should suit them, Verstappen was eighth and seventh respectively in FP1 and FP2 while Albon ended up 13th in the morning session before failing to register a time during a wet afternoon stint.

It continued a less than stellar start to the 2020 season for World Championship hopefuls Red Bull, whose only podium finish in the opening two races in Austria was Verstappen’s P3 at last weekend’s Styrian Grand Prix.

Verstappen told Sky Sports: “FP1 was not so good, plenty to look into. It’s a shame it was raining for FP2 because we could have had a look, so there’s a lot of work to do.

“It’s the overall balance. We need to look at it, but luckily we have a night to do that, make some changes and try to do better tomorrow.”

The rain that affected FP2 is set to remain around the Hungaroring for most of the weekend and Verstappen was certainly aware of the unsettled forecast.

The Dutchman added: “It should be like this every day but it depends if it rains as much. There’s a bit of rain expected every day.”

🗣 "There are strong areas to our car but we still have work to do." @Max33Verstappen ahead of this weekend's #HungarianGP 🇭🇺👉 https://t.co/6oX8k4S909 #F1 pic.twitter.com/V9VBDagrRx

— Aston Martin Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) July 17, 2020

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Albon was also disappointed with how his Friday had gone, following on the back of a trying time in Austria where he lost a potential victory when colliding with Lewis Hamilton and then finished a distant fourth being after off the pace all the way through race two.

The London-born Thai driver said: “FP1 was not ideal and we couldn’t really try anything this afternoon. I think the weather hurt us a bit, trying to understand the car a bit better.

“We need to look at the data in detail and see what we can come up with for tomorrow.

“It’s more predictability than anything else. It’s not one corner, not a big margin in a specific place, it’s just everything is not how we want. We have to do some work to find out what’s going on.”