Max Verstappen showed that Red Bull Racing are in the hunt this weekend at the Circuit Paul Ricard as he displaced the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team duo to top second practice on Friday afternoon.
Valtteri Bottas had earlier topped the morning session in a Mercedes one-two ahead of Lewis Hamilton, but Verstappen took top spot in the afternoon’s running, albeit by just 0.008 seconds. The Dutchman did trigger a brief Virtual Safety Car midway through the session however, as he ran wide at the exit of turn two and left debris from his front wing on the circuit.
For a long time, Bottas looked as though he was heading to finishing top in both sessions, but a late run by the championship leader relegated him to second place, while Hamilton was two-tenths of a second back in third.
Ironically, Bottas’ best lap was set on the medium compound, and when he switched to the softs, he found good pace in sector one before fading in the final two sectors to set a slower lap than he had already achieved earlier in the session. Verstappen, however, was able to find time on the soft compound to jump to the top of the time sheets.
On the other side of the garage, however, Sergio Pérez was more than a second down on his team-mate and ended outside the top ten in twelfth. The Mexican, the winner of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix two weeks ago, will need to find some pace if Red Bull are to fight at the front with both cars this weekend in France.