Verstappen: I needed to go flat out just to keep warm

Max Verstappen says today’s conditions at Circuit de Catalunya were so cold he was forced to push his Red Bull RB14 “flat out” on his debut in the 2018 Formula 1 car just to keep tyre temperatures in a working range.

The Dutch driver missed the majority of the morning session with a fuel leak but recovered in the afternoon to notch up 67 laps with a best effort of 1m 20.326s to take fourth on the overall times.

Tuesday saw almost-freezing conditions at the Spanish circuit with track and air temperatures rarely going above 10 degrees Celsius which made getting heat into the new Pirelli tyres a tricky task for all drivers. Verstappen says his only option was to push “flat out” to get any useful heat in his tyres and echoed teammate Daniel Ricciardo’s comments that the running will be representative for the 2018 season.

“Basically when you go out of the pits it is flat out to keep the temperatures up, and lap by lap you are going faster it’s that cold,” Verstappen said. “And also with the new tarmac it is not that much degradation, it just makes it all a bit more difficult.

“We had a fuel leak and checked everything in the car because the track was in a very bad state anyway, so we didn’t really lose track time.

“Afterwards we completed quite a bit of what we wanted to do. We tested a few things on the car and I was happy so it was a positive day.”

Verstappen hands back to Ricciardo on Wednesday, while the forecast is set for cold and wet conditions again at Circuit de Catalunya, at Red Bull before returning for the final day of the first test on Thursday.