Red Bull shows progress at Monza: “Still work to do, but competitive”. Red Bull showed progress during Friday practice at Monza.

Red Bull improving at Monza: “There’s work to do, but we’re there”

Red Bull ended Friday with competitive performances at Monza. In FP2 Max Verstappen recorded the sixth-fastest time, while Yuki Tsunoda finished ninth. Despite the Dutchman complaining about a lack of balance on the RB21, his long-run pace was solid and consistent. Tsunoda was in a similar position, showing potential to fight for points in this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.

Plenty of work was carried out overnight, with the focus on fine-tuning several aspects of the car to make it even quicker over a single lap.

Verstappen and Tsunoda’s opinions

“Yesterday went quite well. Last year this was a very difficult weekend for us and today we looked much more competitive, which is positive. I am also happier with the car. The sessions were quite tricky, especially with some drivers going off and bringing gravel back onto the track,” explained Max Verstappen.

He added: “I think they might clear the gravel for qualifying, but in the race it could be complicated because it’s not easy to control. Overall it was a pretty good Friday for us: there’s work to do, but we will improve.”

Yuki Tsunoda highlighted how traffic played a key role in the lap times and stressed the importance of finding the right balance to perform in both qualifying and the race. He said: “Overall I think it was a bit of an up-and-down day, but still quite positive and the pace was really good. We had a bit of understeer and if you get that, you need to find out why. We also picked up so much gravel, which we didn’t expect, and we weren’t sure of the reason.”

“Considering we were also in and out of traffic, in the end we managed to put in a pretty good lap. Our consistency on the soft tyre was lacking. I thought in the long run we might have had the pace, but it was missing and we need to find the right balance between short runs and long runs,” he concluded.

All eyes now turn to FP3, scheduled for 12:30, which will provide the final indications before qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix.