Horner weighs in as Verstappen 'takes out his frustration' before Japanese GP

22 September 2023 , 08:33

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Christian Horner and Max Verstappen in conversation during practice at Suzuka on Friday (Image: AP)

Max Verstappen "took out his frustration" on a padel court after a terrible Singapore Grand Prix to reset himself for this weekend.

Red Bull were worried ahead of the Singapore weekend and those concerns were proven to be reasonable. Despite being superior all year, they struggled for pace at the Marina Bay street circuit.

It allowed their rivals to end their 100 per cent win record in 2023, Carlos Sainz the one to take the victory. Verstappen said after the race he would not lose any sleep after his winning streak came to an end, but team principal Christian Horner has hinted that the Dutchman did need to vent a little.

"Max was super clear last weekend," he said, reflecting on the aftermath of the Singapore race. "He was very, very constructive in the debrief, very constructive all week."

Referring to how Verstappen got over the disappointment, Horner added: "Taking his frustration out on the paddle tennis courts with his engineers, beating GP [race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase], which didn't go down well, but he's been very constructive in his approach."

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Red Bull rivals expect them to be back on song this weekend at Suzuka. And Friday practice produced evidence of that as Verstappen was very comfortable the quickest in both sessions.

The timesheets were indicating that he was feeling much better about his car, and he confirmed it after he had climbed back out of it. "It felt really good today. From lap one the car was enjoyable to drive again," said the Dutchman.

"It seems like we had a strong day, on short runs, long runs... There's a lot of degradation on this track, so it will be quite tough on tyres in the race. But so far we had a good start to the weekend.

"It looks like it's all a bit tight behind me. Ferrari and McLaren are close, so we'll have a look. But I think, at the end of the day, we just focus on ourselves and try to optimise our performance. And then if we do that, then I'm confident that we can fight for pole."

Sergio Perez, however, had a much less smooth day. "We had problems with the balance of the car in FP1, we tried to improve it a bit in FP2," said the Mexican, though he did go on to add his belief that the team has a "pretty good understanding" why things weren't quite working for him on Friday.

Daniel Moxon