Red Bull lacks outright speed, claims Verstappen

Despite a raft of upgrades introduced at Melbourne, Red Bull continued to struggle for outright speed, with Max Verstappen claiming that the RB21 does not suffer any particular issues, it simply lacks speed.

Red Bull appeared to struggle during pre-season testing in Bahrain, and the Milton Keynes-based outfit did not look in a better form on the opening day at the Australian Grand Prix despite a raft of upgrades including a new floor.

Max Verstappen requested a series of set-up changes for the second one-hour session, but those tweaks did not significantly improve the RB21. In fact, the changes made the car even less driveable according to the team.

Reflecting on his day, Verstappen sounded a pessimistic note: “Today the grip wasn’t great and we were struggling on all four tyres, particularly in sector one and the final sector. It feels like we are not up there at the moment but we will work to find more pace.

"There are no major balance issues, so I think this makes things a bit harder to fix. But this isn’t anything that we didn’t expect when we arrived here. Positively, I think we were surprised with the pace that the car showed.

"Historically, we have not been that good here in Melbourne since the new tarmac update so will see how we go over the weekend. However, we will continue to work to find a bit more pace ahead of qualifying.”

His new team-mate Liam Lawson clipped the wall on his opening runs in FP1 and then looked to have damaged the floor of his RB21 by running over some kerbs.

The New Zealander then managed to get closer to the reigning champion, reducing the gap to six tenths, but his best lap time was still only enough to P17.

“I felt comfortable in the car today, but it just wasn’t fast enough, so we have a lot of work to do overnight. Day one on a new track you are expecting to have work to do but not this much.

"We can’t really pinpoint why it’s been tricky out there so far, if we knew we could fix it a lot quicker. We need to pick it up on short run pace, but the long run pace wasn’t great either, so yeah, a lot to do. So, it will be a challenge for the Team, but we will aim to improve for tomorrow.”