The balance ‘mish-mash’ hampering Verstappen in Turkey

The 2021 championship contender was heard regularly complaining about the balance of his Red Bull over team radio throughout Friday’s pair of 60-minute practice sessions as he struggled to match the pace of title rival Lewis Hamilton. 

Verstappen wound up over four-tenths adrift of Hamilton in opening practice before the Dutchman fell to fifth in the afternoon, finishing the day some six-tenths behind the timesheet-topping Mercedes. 

In FP2, Verstappen reported he was getting “weird snaps” and that his RB16B car felt “like a slingshot” at mid-corner. 

Speaking to Sky after the conclusion of Friday’s on-track running, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner confirmed Verstappen’s day was hampered by a balance problem. 

“We’ve got a little bit of a balance mish-mash at the moment,” Horner said. 

“The circuit is a lot grippier than it was last year, I think we’re just a little bit out of the window with Max on set-up. 

“So it’s going to be a busy night, burning the midnight oil with the mechanics, and no doubt back in Milton Keynes as well.” 

Asked if he is confident the issue can be rectified in time for final practice and qualifying on Saturday, Horner said: “I think so - I think it’s just understanding the issue. 

“We know we’ve got a good car, it’s just getting into that window and I don’t think we hit that today.” 

Having made changes to try and counter his understeer problems in FP1, Verstappen then ended up suffering from oversteer in the second session. 

Verstappen admitted the set-up changes had not helped and predicted a long night ahead to try and get on top of his issues around Istanbul Park. 

“We tried a few things compared to FP1, but also FP1 wasn’t that great,” he explained. 

“So we’re still looking around a bit at what to do. It’s a bit different here, we don’t have a lot of data with these kind of cars so yeah, we have a bit of an evening ahead to make it a bit better because today wasn’t the best of days. 

“Hopefully of course it will improve, otherwise it’s not looking too good. But we’ll see what we can do overnight.” 

Verstappen comes into the weekend trialing Hamilton by just two points in the world championship, but his main rival will be hit with a 10-place demotion for changing onto his fourth engine of the year. 

However, Verstappen is finding no comfort from Hamilton’s situation and insisted Red Bull can only focus on what is in its control. 

“We have to focus on ourselves and today wasn’t that good,” he added. “So we’ll work on that.”