Max after Friday practice in Istanbul: 'This makes no sense at all'
Published on 13 November 2020 by Mike Motilall
After the first two free practices for the Turkish Grand Prix, Max Verstappen spoke with Olav Mol for the show Formule 1 Café. This is aired during the Formula 1-season every Friday evening at 22.30 on Ziggo Sport channel 14 and Ziggo Sport Select.
When Olav asks how he experienced the start of the first free practice, Max answers: “I was having wheel spin from first gear up till fifth and I also had measuring equipment on the car which causes you to also have less downforce, so that was not very nice to drive with. There was zero grip, I don’t know what they did with the asphalt, but it makes no sense at all. It was even worse than Portimão. Well, just a shame.”
Is it worse in the slow corners because you have less downforce there? Max: “It’s just very slippery everywhere. In the simulator we ran a pretty reserved setting. We did 22’s and 23’s, here we are doing 28’s. That isn’t fun in a Formula 1-car. The thing is, you have the engine at the back, you also have a lot of wheel spin, the front tyres are getting cold and under these conditions, it takes a very long time before you can find a good balance to get things going.”
Halfway the first free practice you were having problems with your brakes? Max: “There was some paint on the brake disc and the problem was just getting worse. I don’t know where that happened to me. I had to come in and then they scraped it off, after that everything was okay again.”
Alex Albon had a strong run, does that make any difference with the data that the engineers have at their disposal at the end of the day? Max explains: “I had to test the new front wings and then you really want to do a long run because then the tyres are kept nicely up to temperature. I did four or five laps, which caused me to head back in a lot more and then you lose a lot of tyre temperature. Then that needs some more laps and you are already running with a different front wing as well. So it was never really ideal.”
“And Alex was running with more downforce at the back, so with more wing. During my final run on the new softs, I also added some more wing and then things improved tremendously. I was also able to do a longer run for the first time then. On our side it was important to run through those front wings to see which one was the best.”
