Verstappen lacks top speed grunt from Red Bull

Max Verstappen says his Red Bull’s engine requires some ‘fine tuning’ after lacking top-end speed on the straights to close the gap to team-mate Daniel Ricciardo at the top of the timesheet in Singapore.

The Dutch driver ended Friday practice second fastest but over half a second behind Red Bull team-mate Ricciardo on his single lap pace.

Verstappen says he was forced to abort his opening qualifying simulation after Romain Grosjean spun ahead of him midway through FP2 while on his other attempts his Renault-powered RB13 lacked top speed on the Marina Bay Street Circuit straights.

Despite losing out to Ricciardo, Verstappen is confident with engine tweaks he can quickly close the gap and be in the hunt for a maiden pole position in Formula 1.

“We all know that Daniel is very, very quick here,” Verstappen said. “My fast lap I had to abort because Grosjean had spun and there were yellow flags and I couldn’t use the DRS so it makes no sense to continue.

“So there’s still some lap time to come, also fine tuning the engine because we weren’t on top speeds today compared with the other cars that wasn’t great. We’ll see what happens.”