Things didn’t quite go to plan for Red Bull at Silverstone on Friday. The team was unable to take part in the first free practice session for the 2022 Formula 1 British Grand Prix, and experienced some problems during the second hour of driving. Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez urged their team to sort it out quickly so as not to be hampered over the weekend.

The first day of the British Grand Prix F1 weekend was not a success for Red Bull. The two cars did not leave the paddock during the first free practice session because of the red flag that was displayed following Lance Stroll’s accident. So it was during the second hour of practice that Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez were able to do their first laps on the Silverstone track. And not everything went according to plan for the two drivers. The Dutchman set the fourth fastest time behind Carlos Sainz Jr, Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris, but had to cut his session short due to a mechanical problem.

Things didn’t go much better for Sergio Pérez, who was seventh fastest in the second free practice session. The Mexican complained about the unexpected behaviour of his car, which seems to have taken Red Bull by surprise. The 32-year-old has called on his team to look into the problem quickly in order to understand what is going on and find a way to fix it as soon as possible.

“It wasn’t a great session today. The car is a long way from what we had in the simulator during the preparations. We assume something is going on, but we need to figure it out. It’s not a good start,” admits the Mexican,

“We’re a bit behind. We need to understand what’s going on. We’ve done it in the past and as long as we can get things back on track… You have to have confidence in these high-speed corners. So as long as I can get the confidence back, I’ll be fine,

“We suspect something aerodynamic, but obviously I can’t go into too much detail. We have some aerodynamic problems that I hope we can solve tonight. We understand what’s going on but at the end of the day it’s important to sort it out,” said Sergio Perez in a statement reported by Motorsport.com.

For his part, Max Verstappen is trying to look on the bright side and believes the situation could have been worse. The Dutchman is already focusing on Saturday, when the conditions will certainly be different.

“We know what we need to work on and that’s what we’re going to do tonight, but it will probably rain again tomorrow, with different conditions,

“Sometimes it works straight away, sometimes it’s not great. This time it probably wasn’t crazy, but it wasn’t that bad either. We’re still here and there are things to analyse, with the tyres too.”