Have recent updates stunted Mercedes\u2019 W16 progress?<\/a><\/p>\nSpeaking to media after the session, Verstappen offered a very calm explanation for what happened during that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a towel that you normally wipe your face with when you come back in,\u201d he said of the cloth. \u201cIt was still in the car when I went out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather than keep the cloth inside the cockpit, he opted to discard it.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of it maybe potentially flying in between my feet, which is the dangerous part, I drove off line, and I got rid of it in the safest way possible,\u201d Verstappen explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the stewards understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stewards nevertheless wished to speak with Verstappen and a representative of Red Bull Racing, though the FIA ultimately came to the same conclusion: The incident was a mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe driver explained that while in the garage, the face towel had slipped from his lap to the side of the seat and the team was unaware that it remained in the cockpit,\u201d the stewards\u2019 report reads.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the driver realised it was there, he moved to the far right of the track and attempted to throw it as far away from the car and the track as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the towel situation was easily the most notable moment of Verstappen\u2019s during the session, that is largely thanks to the fact that Red Bull Racing is struggling at the Hungaroring.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday was very tough,\u201d Verstappen said of his practice sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust really low grip feeling and, yeah, not really a balance in the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s even difficult to say, what is the exact problem? Nothing really works.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is something that we have to investigate overnight, because so far, of course, yeah, it\u2019s not been our weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Verstappen is \u201csure we can do better,\u201d he also admitted that \u201ctoday was quite bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to really understand first, where it is and what what is causing us to have such a big problem with the car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, McLaren looks really on it. They\u2019re flying, but, yeah, naturally, of course, I want to be a little bit closer to P3.\u201d<\/p>\n
In FP2, Verstappen was very far from P3 indeed. He was only able to set the 14th-fastest time in FP2, and he regularly radioed in to the team to let him know that the car felt completely unbalanced. He described it feeling like driving on ice.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda, by contrast, was the better performing of the two Red Bull drivers, finishing the session in ninth overall.<\/p>\n
Of course, practice is not fully representative or race or qualifying pace, so Red Bull could very could have something left in the tank. Ideally, though, it\u2019ll have taken care of any wayward towels before Saturday!<\/p>\n
Read next:\u00a0FIA confirm Red Bull punishment after Max Verstappen investigation triggers investigation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull Racing has faced a warning from the FIA after driver Max Verstappen discarded a towel left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,1613,27858,1885,44,1882,82],"class_list":["post-40272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-hungarian-grand-prix","tag-max-verstappen","tag-news","tag-red-bull","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}