Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen is doubtful about his chances in his home grand prix this weekend as he expects his Red Bull will not perform strongly at Zandvoort.
Zandvoort’s layout has much in common with the last venue F1 visited, the Hungaroring. Both tracks are largely narrow, difficult to overtake at and feature several constant-radius medium-speed corners.
Verstappen had one of his worst weekends of the season so far in Hungary. He qualified eighth and fell to ninth in the race.
“That was not a great weekend for us,” the reigning world champion admitted. “So I hope that we can be closer.”
However he predicted this will be another challenging event for Red Bull. “I don’t think this is going to be our best track in the remainder of the calendar,” he said.
“But then again, there might be some [wet] weather coming in as well. That always creates a bit of chaos so we just need to see what happens.”
Verstappen has won twice this year, at Suzuka and Imola. He said the RB21 clearly performs better at faster tracks like those.
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“I would say naturally the more higher-speed corners in the layout, that should be a bit better for us,” he said. “The low-speed and medium-speed is probably a little bit more difficult.”
There are 10 rounds left in the season before F1 introduces a drastically revised set of regulations for next year. Verstappen said he wants to use the remainder of this season to improve his understanding of Red Bull’s current car before the new rules arrive.
“We’ll just try to make the best of it every single race we can,” he said. “Try to see if there are opportunities and try to learn more about the car.
“Of course next year will be very different with the car but I’m still very curious also to understand the current car a bit more and where we can find a bit of performance to make it a bit easier for ourselves.”
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