Verstappen fears Red Bull is “very weak” around Monaco

An 'uncomfortable' Max Verstappen has described his Red Bull as “very weak” after struggling on the opening day of practice for the Monaco Grand Prix.

The title-chasing Dutchman, who has one win to leader Lewis Hamilton’s three so far this season, was this week tipped by his rival as the favourite for victory on Sunday.

But Verstappen could only finish second practice fourth quickest, 0.397secs behind surprise pacesetter Charles Leclerc.

A disappointed Verstappen said: “I would have hoped we were a little bit faster. We are too slow. And not just a little bit, I think quite a bit.

"We need to really find some pace because everyone has traffic so you have to look a bit more to optimum lap times, optimum sectors, and we are quite out.

“It also didn’t feel great to drive. Normally I am quite comfortable in the car and can quite easily get to a pace but it takes too long and not how I like it. So, so far a bit of a difficult weekend.”

Leclerc spearheaded a Ferrari one-two after the Monégasque deposed Carlos Sainz at the top of the timesheet with the final hot lap in FP2.

Assessing Ferrari's pace, Verstappen added: “I am just surprised how competitive Ferrari is but I think it just shows that we are pretty weak.

"They are doing very well and we are very weak so then the offset is very big.

“Luckily we have a free day tomorrow so we can look into things. The gap they have is big and we need to improve a lot to match that.”

Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez, who finished a second behind Leclerc down in eighth after previously topping FP1, added: “We had a very good FP1, the car was feeling good, we did a couple of changes and we probably took a step back.

“I think we have enough information for qualifying come Saturday but we need to find some pace at low fuel.

"I had a bad run on the soft, a lot of traffic and I couldn’t put my final sector together [so] my best sector was on the medium.”

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