ANALYSIS: Verstappen loses eight tenths to his rivals on the staights

Reigning champion Max Verstappen endured a shock opening day at Las Vegas, but the data suggests that the Dutchman will have more to offer when teams turn up their engines in qualifying. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his latest analysis.

‘We have no grip’ - that was the verdict of Max Verstappen as he reflected on Red Bull's opening day at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The Dutch driver had a relatively encouraging opening session, finishing fifth. However, he found himself at the bottom end of the leaderboard in Free Practice 2, setting a lap of 1m35.834s which was only enough for P17.

His team-mate Sergio Perez ended up tenth in the opening practice, half a second off the reigning champion. Although the Mexican improved his best time from FP1 by half a second, he finished down in the second-to-last position in the second outing.

Despite the lowly position in the second one-hour session, things might look slightly better than what Red Bull duo's results indicate. They were both hampered by the red flag for Alex Albon’s stricken Williams in the second practice. As there were only just over 20 minutes left on the clock, the Milton Keynes-based outfit elected to concentrate on longer race simulation runs, which means that their real pace remains a mystery after the opening day at Las Vegas.

Commenting on his issues, Verstappen reckoned that his team struggled to get the tyres into their operating window which meant that he lacked pace both over a single lap and in race trim.

“It was really slippery on track today: I think we struggled to make the tyres work, especially over one lap, and we were quite far off with the pace.

"On the long runs we started off a bit more competitively, but we still need to fine tune a few things. It is very cold and the conditions are quite unique around here. However, at the end of the day this is the same for everyone, so we need to understand what we are doing wrong.

"The issue for us is definitely tyre related as we have no grip and it feels like driving on ice. We will look into what we can do to fix this and hopefully improve for tomorrow.”

By contrast, Perez complained about the balance of his car, claiming that the modified rear wing meant that the RB20 was extremely difficult to drive.

“I think we have some work to do over one lap, I think the long run looked a little bit more promising, but we have got to focus overnight to really try to exploit everything because we are not where we want.

"We were mainly struggling with balance in the low speed today, the rear is stepping out a lot, we came down a lot on downforce with the rear wing and it made it quite tricky."

Comparing Verstappen's best lap with his championship rival Lando Norris', it is clear that most of the deficit comes on the straights. The Dutch driver lost 0.185s on the short section between Turns 4 and 5, and a further 0.151s on the fast, full-throttle section between Turn 9 and 12.

He then lost over three tenths on the extremely long high-speed section between Turn 12 and 14 before he registered another loss of 0.188s on the run-down towards the finish line.

By contrast, Verstappen looked very strong in a series of low-speed corners, acceleration zones and braking zone, indicating that what he felt was not that dramatic and his lack of pace was mainly down to his straight-line deficit.

However, it remains to be seen what Red Bull might be able to do in a bid to cure the issue. If Red Bull were running a much more "depowered" engine setting compared to their usual rivals, the higher engine mode will see Perez and Verstappen pick up the pace in qualifying. However, if the issue is mainly down to what the team's motorsport advisor Helmut Marko indicated, it will be a real struggle for the Milton Keynes-based squad to match its rivals' pace.

Reflecting on the day, the Austrian said that Red Bull did not have an optimal rear wing configuration for the high-speed Las Vegas circuit, and arrived in Nevada with a similar solution to what it used in Monza at the Italian Grand Prix.

"We don't have another rear wing, a smaller rear wing, as we see it on our competitors. It would be more helpful, for sure," added Marko.