Red Bull’s Max Verstappen: ‘It will be hard to beat’ Ferrari in dry weather at Hungarian Grand Prix

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was pessimistic over his team’s chances of battling with Ferrari at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

In the second session, Verstappen was fourth quickest as McLaren’s Lando Norris impressed yet again as second fastest.

Verstappen was a quarter of a second off the pace ahead of tomorrow’s final practice and qualifying session.

At last weekend’s French Grand Prix, Verstappen had Leclerc’s error to thank for an easier run to first than had been anticipated, and he said on Friday evening that Ferrari hold the advantage at the Hungaroring.

“They are a bit ahead. It will be hard to beat that but we will try to close the gap,” Verstappen said.

“(We’ll) see what the weather will give us tomorrow,” added Verstappen of a forecast for rain. “In the dry, we can’t compete so maybe in the rain we can. Who knows?

“A bit tricky as expected around here, just trying to find a balance from high to low speed. Sometimes it worked a bit better, sometimes a bit more tricky. A bit of work to do.”

Asked about the prospect of the weather impacting qualifying, Leclerc said: “It looks like it’s going to rain tomorrow so we have to be on top of this and obviously put the tyres in the right window, which is always a difficult thing whenever it’s raining.

“This will be our main priority, but hopefully if we manage to put them in the right window, we will still have this advantage.

“It’s been a very productive day, changed quite a lot of things on the car on my side. FP1 was quite tricky, FP2 we took the right road so confident that we did the right work for Sunday.”

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, who was well off the pace in 11th, acknowledged a disappointing two sessions.

He described it as “a difficult day.”, adding: “The car’s a bit of a struggle. It’s crazy how it swings so much from track to track, just set-up, trying to figure out how we can get working.

“It’s a little bit loose and it’s not doing what we want it to do. For some reason this track it’s not working that well. But once we got it right, the gap (to the front) is about the same as last week, about a second.”