"Difficult to get good balance": Max Verstappen as he brushes off close-call with Hamilton
May 18, 2024
Imola [Italy], May 18 : At the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, Max Verstappen had a difficult first day of competition and the Dutchman said that Saturday's running "can't be worse" than Friday's after finding it difficult to settle into his Red Bull.
Verstappen's luck did not improve much in the second practice hour of the day as he continued to have the same problem with his RB20 after complaining of a lack of grip during Free Practice 1, a session in which he had multiple trips across the grass.
He finally concluded the session in P7 on the timesheets and then discussed the issues he had encountered after hopping out of the car.
"A difficult day. [It was] just difficult to get a good balance, and [I was] just not really feeling comfortable in the car. Moving around a lot, it's very easy to lose the car, so [there are] a few things that we have to look at because today [was] just bad, just not comfortable," Verstappen said as quoted by Formula 1.
Talking about whether he and the team can carry out work overnight and bounce back on this weekend's race, Verstappen said, "Also the long run was really bad, so definitely a few things that we have to improve if we want to be competitive tomorrow. I guess it can't be worse than what we had today! We'll look at a few things that we can do better for tomorrow, but it looks a bit like the others took a bit of a step forward, and from our side just a bad day."
In addition to the problems with his vehicle, Verstappen expressed his annoyance during Free Practice 2 when he came across a slow-moving Lewis Hamilton approaching the hairpin. The Mercedes driver then raised his hand to apologise for the mishap.
"It's not the first time. You try to of course always stay calm about it, but it happened again. I also don't really want to talk about it too much because that's not our issue. Today we were just severely off the pace, which we need to fix," he added.
Meanwhile, Hamilton gave his version of events and accepted responsibility for his run-in with Verstappen.
"I was on a cool-down lap. I thought I was well clear, would've been well clear, but all of a sudden he was right on me. Ultimately it was my mistake and I tried to apologise, but he was too frustrated," Hamilton said.
