Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen topped the timesheets in the wet morning free practice session at the Sepang International Circuit on Friday morning and followed it up with a fourth placed finish in the dry in the shortened afternoon session.
The young Dutchman was beaten by both Ferrari's and his own teammate in FP2, but overall he was happy enough with how the day progressed and the amount of work the team managed to complete.
However, that said, he knows they need to do better to beat Ferrari, and a little more rain added into the mix wouldn't hurt either…
"I think today was positive. Of course, compared to Ferrari it can be better but it's not a bad performance and we still end the day ahead of Mercedes. From my side, I was trying quite a few set-up changes on the car but those didn't really work on the new set of Supersoft tyres,” he said.
“I came in and changed the car but you always know that on used tyres it's not fantastic to do a lap, but I still improved my time by four tenths. For sure tomorrow it will be better but we still need to improve to beat Ferrari.”
“I missed out on doing a long run this afternoon because of the red flag, so I will see with Daniel how he is feeling and then we will decide what we can do tomorrow to improve the car. Tomorrow I'm hoping for rain, not too much that we aren't driving, but a little bit would make things interesting."
