Max Verstappen admits he was pushing too hard when he spun off in second practice for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
Verstappen’s afternoon was cut short after he lost the rear of his Red Bull on the exit of Luffield while running on the hard tyre. The Dutchman ended the session in the barriers, sustaining damage to the rear of his car.
When asked about his crash in second practice, he told Sky Sports: ”I think I wanted to be too quick on the hard tyre, so I just lost it. Unfortunately the way then that you hit the wall, it just rips off the right-rear.
”But yeah, I think at the end of the day, it’s not ideal to lose the second session, but the feeling I had before that was actually quite good. I think balance-wise, we are not too far off. It’s just we are losing a lot of lap time on the straight.”
Despite his crash, he was happy with the balance of his Red Bull but admits challenging Mercedes and Ferrari for pole is unlikely.
”I feel good always around this track. Of course it’s better to drive a lot, but I feel confident already in FP1 with the harder tyres. I think the pace was good. Like I said, it seems like we are definitely not fighting for pole, but we’ll just try again tomorrow. At least I have two sets of softs, so that’s positive.”
Verstappen suffered a gearbox issue in FP1, but team boss Christian Horner confirmed there is no risk of a grid penalty.
”The damage isn’t too bad, to be honest with you, 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. Annoyingly frustrating but we still got some good data from Daniel’s car.”