Max Verstappen has issued a warning that his race pace for the Mexico City Grand Prix “is of course a big concern” as the Red Bull driver struggled on longer simulation runs despite topping Free Practice 2 on Friday.
The Dutchman enters this weekend on the crest of a wave, having won three of the last four Grands Prix, which has moved him to within 40 points of Drivers’ Championship leader Oscar Piastri with five races remaining, including this weekend at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
Verstappen missed FP1 as most teams ran rookie drivers, but the four-time World Champion was immediately on the pace in the day’s second one-hour session, his 1m 17.392s leaving him more than one-tenth clear of Charles Leclerc.
But Verstappen was left unhappy after the session with the performance of his RB21’s race pace, the car featuring new upgrades this weekend including to the floor and cooling systems.
“The short run I think on the softs we managed to do a good lap,” he said.
“The rest, everything else was pretty bad. On the medium, short run was not great and the big problem is the long runs where we seem to struggle a lot. That is of course a big concern for the race.”
“I don’t know yet,” added Verstappen when asked if he had any initial thoughts on the problem.
“The balance wasn’t even off, there was just no grip. That is the bigger concern. As soon as you go in a sustainable run, tyres are going hot. We were nowhere. That’s a tough one to sort out but we’ll see.”
Verstappen has won five times at the Mexico City venue, but with the track featuring one of the longest runs to the first corner off the line, holding onto the advantage of pole position is difficult.
With that in mind, and the potential for further overtaking, Verstappen stated that “you’re not going to win the race” by just having good one-lap pace.
“You can be fast over one lap but if you have absolutely zero pace in the race it’s going to be very tough, so I prefer to be fast in the race and not so fast over one lap,” he concluded.
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