Red Bull not as bad as they look, McLaren not as good

On the Red Bull side, four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen missed FP1 as he made way for Isack Hadjar and then took over for FP2, where he finished 17th fastest, complaining about understeer all session long.

Verstappen said at the end of the day: "Just not a very good balance, to be honest. No connected balance from entry to mid-corner and that makes it then difficult to basically push. That’s something we have to work on overnight.

"I’m sure that we can do better," he added. "I’m not saying that we will be like McLaren level because they seem very quick so far this weekend but at least if we can fight in that top six that’ll be a good recovery because so far it’s been quite tricky."

But Red Bull team boss Christian Horner claimed things were not as bad as they seemed; he explained: "The front axle of the car is just not working for him. It just feels solid, so a bit of work to do there.

"It's not as bad as it looks but there's quite a lot of performance to be found in getting the front of the car to respond," Horner maintained.

On the McLaren side, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were the fastest and second fastest in the more representative FP2 and by a comfortable margin.

But Norris has warned that other teams are not as slow as they seemed and that McLaren will have a fight on their hands when it gets serious in qualifying and the race despite the impressive race and qualifying pace they showed on Friday.

He said: "It was a good day, yeah. [The] car’s been feeling good the whole day, so [it] continued our pace out of Qatar and, yeah, it feels strong. I think we have some things to improve on in both low and high fuel, more so the high fuel.

"Totally looks probably better than it is, I don’t think the others turned up their engines yet, so it might look glorious for now but I think we’re still going to have a tough fight tomorrow," Norris then claimed.

The McLaren driver was quizzed whether his MCL38 can be improved any further; he explained: "I mean it’s nothing huge, it’s small things.

"It’s trying to find the balance of going quicker but saving the tyres, especially in the longer run stuff. [It’s] how much where can you push more and where do you need to save, how can you save the tyres more with driving, the toys, things I can change on my steering wheel and the underlying balance on the car.

"Just trying to find the right compromise is the main thing," the 25-year-old driver concluded.