Verstappen blames Friday struggles on FP1 failure

F1 championship leader Max Verstappen has suggested his FP2 struggles were a direct consequence of his gearbox failure in the first session of the Dutch Grand Prix weekend.

The Red Bull driver has so far endured a torrid homecoming after grinding to a halt just 10 minutes into FP1 before searching for balance in the second hour.

Verstappen eventually finished eighth - seven-tenths adrift of Charles Leclerc as the Ferrari driver topped the session.

The performance was in stark contrast to the untouchable nature of his drive in Belgium last weekend.

"Missing out on FP1 on the soft tyre, on the hard tyre you couldn't really tell the balance because you have so little grip on the tyre," explained Verstappen.

"Then you are a session behind so we went into FP2 and the balance wasn't great but in an hour's session you can't really change the car a lot so we just tried to deal with what we had.

"That wasn't great but we have the night to look over things.

"For sure we can do better."

On whether he was surprised by the gap between himself and the two Ferraris - Carlos Sainz just 0.004secs behind his team-mate - Verstappen replied: "To be honest while driving, I was not really surprised when I saw the lap time difference.

"There are a lot of things we can improve on.

"We will try to, of course, be more competitive."

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