Red Bull have “identified the issues” but tipped to be behind McLaren at Italian GP

Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft believes Red Bull will remain behind McLaren despite progress being made by the reigning world champions at the Italian Grand Prix.

The timesheets didn’t look too good for Red Bull though in second practice, with Max Verstappen failing to set a quick lap on the softs.

This left Verstappen 14th in the order, while teammate Sergio Perez was 15th overall.

However, Croft is adamant Red Bull have slowly started to make progress with the RB20 following a difficult Dutch Grand Prix, where Verstappen finished over 20 seconds behind Lando Norris.

“I still think whilst they’ve understood the problems they’ve been suffering from they’re still fine-tuning it to try and find performance now they’ve identified the issues,” Croft said.

“I would imagine they will be a little bit behind McLaren but not much. Whether they’re ahead of Ferrari, I am still not quite sure.”

Ex-F1 driver Karun Chandhok still thinks it’s too early to know where Red Bull stand in the pecking order after both Verstappen and Perez failed to set representative laps.

“I think it’s really hard to tell. I honestly think all those three teams that we saw today are super close based on today’s evidence,” Chandhok explained. “We will see what happens tomorrow when they’ve learned a bit more overnight in the simulator.

“I think Verstappen is in that mix. We didn’t see a lap from Perez. He ran out of sync and we didn’t see a lap so there’s no real reference for Red Bull at all.”

Verstappen’s reaction

Verstappen was encouraged by Red Bull’s pace in FP1, where they set the fastest time.

The Dutchman believes there’s a number of “interesting” setup avenues for Verstappen to explore.

“Just trying to get quite a few things today,” Verstappen commented. “FP2 initially wasn’t that great but then it seemed like the long run was a little more competitive. It seems quite aggressive on tyres at the moment. They’re opening up. Quite interesting how that will evolve for the race as well. I think we have quite a few good directions to take with the car.

“Just need to tidy it up a bit. I think it will be quite close as you can see between a lot of cars. Hopefully we can be in that mix.”