It was a day of contrasting fortunes for Red Bull during Formula 1 practice at the Circuit of the Americas. Max Verstappen was largely satisfied with the early signs of the RB22, although he stressed that the balance between high-speed and low-speed corners still needed improvement, with technical director Pierre Wache indicating that Red Bull needed to make gains in the slower sections of the track.
Verstappen used the word 'fine-tuning', but things are certainly not at that stage on the other side of the garage. Isack Hadjar had a largely positive feeling during FP1, despite finishing 14th in the standings, but decided to explore a slightly different set-up direction for the second session of the day.
"I did [make a lot of changes after FP1]. I was happy-ish with how it went this morning. Afterwards, I thought I was heading in the right direction, but it only brought a lot more problems", the Frenchman concluded.
"I still felt okay on the medium, even though we changed the car. But on the soft, the car was completely gone for me. It was very difficult to drive, so I need to turn things around tomorrow.
"We need to sit down and see what we can do because the car made a massive step down. We need to bring it back, at least to the level it was this morning."
Hadjar had already been voicing his frustrations over the team radio during FP2. His qualifying simulation in particular fell apart, leaving him almost a full second behind team-mate Verstappen at the end of the day.
Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing
The balance problems caused Hadjar's front tyres to overheat extremely quickly, with all the consequences that entailed.
"It was just a disaster. I made most of my lap time in sector 1, but from sector 1 until the end of the lap I was slower than on the medium. It was just undriveable, I was losing the front end massively.
"We need to have a look because this is not normal, why there was so much degradation over one lap. The fronts were completely killed in the high-speed [corners]."
This happened particularly through the Esses, after which Hadjar had to pay the price for the remainder of the lap, according to Wache.
"With this type of lay-out, you have the full high-speed corners in sector 1, after Turn 1. And I think if you overcook the tyres there, it's more or less finished for the lap", Red Bull’s technical director said.
Things naturally need to improve significantly for qualifying, although Hadjar took some confidence from Verstappen's day. Hadjar remains hopeful that he can turn the situation around with fresh set-up changes before parc ferme conditions come into effect at the start of qualifying.
"Yes, I mean, if they manage to do it on the other side… The [tyre] temperatures are just sky-high, but we are running at the same speeds in those corners. So we need to tweak something on the car balance. We were running different things to try, but to have such a bad feeling, I’m a bit surprised to be honest."
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