Max Verstappen admitted that he’d simply been too ambitious on his first run of the afternoon in Free Practice 2 at Silverstone.
Verstappen had gone out on the hard compound tyre when the car suddenly snapped into oversteer at Luffield. He attempted to catch the spin but ended up in the barrier, clouting the right rear of the RB14.
“I think I wanted to be too quick on the hard tyre,” he told reporters afterwards. “I just lost it.”
The car was recovered to the pit lane, but there was too much work for the team to do in order to get it back out on track before the end of the 90 minute session.
“Unfortunately the way I hit the wall, it ripped off the right rear,” he confirmed. “At the end of the day it is not ideal to lose the second session, but feeling I had [in the car] before that was pretty good.
“I think balance-wise we are not far off,” he insisted, before adding: “But we are losing a lot of lap time on the straights.”
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While Verstappen was unable to set a lap time in the afternoon, his team mate Daniel Ricciardo ended the day fifth fastest. He was over eight tenths slower that the fastest man in FP2, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
Verstappen had been slower than his team mate in the morning session, having lost time in FP1 due to a software issue.
Despite having both sessions compromised on Friday, Verstappen was still feeling confident about the outlook for Saturday’s qualifying session and for Sunday’s British Grand Prix.
“FP3 is still long enough to get [a long run] in, so I’ll get some information from that, and I know I have Daniel’s data, so it should be alright.
“I feel good always around this track, and I felt confident in FP1 already with the harder tyres,” he insisted. “The pace is good, but it seems like we are not fighting for pole. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
And at least his curtailed sessions meant that he now had a surfeit of tyres on hand for the remainder of the weekend.
“At least I have two sets of softs, so that’s positive!” he laughed.
Team boss Christian Horner confirmed that there would be no problem getting Verstappen’s car back in working order in tome for tomorrow’s crucial sessions.
“The damage isn’t too bad, to be honest with you,” Horner said. “And it’s not a race gearbox. It’s just annoying to lose that much time in second practice.
“On that hard tyre he got into a slide, it looked like he gripped up. It looked like a motorcycle high-side, it just chucked the car in the other direction.
“It’s annoying and frustrating, but we still got some good data from Daniel’s car.”
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