Max Verstappen and Red Bull team principal Christian Horner had differing views on their potential following Friday practice at Silverstone.

The reigning world champion struggled with understeer on the opening day of practice for the British Grand Prix. “For me personally it was quite a bad day,” he told the official F1 channel.

“No balance in the car. It’s very difficult corner-to-corner as well. So quite a poor day I think for us in general.”

He said the team’s car had been particularly affected by the windy conditions at the track. “Every weekend is different scenarios. Now with the wind around here it seems like our car seems quite sensitive to it. In general, it’s not been an easy day.”

Red Bull has tended to make significant gains between Friday and Saturday practice sessions this year. Verstappen said they had a few ideas to look into overnight. “But I think overall we’re just lacking a bit of performance,” he concluded.

Horner, however, said the team was losing most of its lap time at a few specific points on the track and he is hopeful they will be able to make improvements to the car.

“We’re giving away 90% of our lap time in turn six and seven,” he told Sky. “So the slow speed and turning back into the wind.

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“But the rest of the lap’s looking pretty decent. And actually the long runs, if you look at the times, look pretty sensible. So I think we’ve got something we can work with. We’ve just got to make sure we tune it overnight the right way.”

He admitted it won’t be an “easy fix” for the team but believes they will be able to give Verstappen a competitive car.

“It’s something that’s tune-able,” said Horner. “We’ve introduced a new floor here. It’s given the load that we were hoping for, that correlates with what we expected. It’s now a matter of balancing it.

“I think that the slow [corners] – Brooklands, Luffield, those corners in this middle sector – are where we need to find the time – and in the middle of Becketts.

“We know how much Max hates understeer, if we can get some front [end grip] in the car, then I think he can be very competitive. But in the long run where everything calms down a bit, definitely the long runs look reasonably sensible.”

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