Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were both downcast for Red Bull's

Max Verstappen gave a blunt assessment of Red Bull’s prospects for the Monaco Grand Prix weekend after both he and team-mate Sergio Perez struggled for pace in Friday’s practice sessions.

The Red Bull pair could only manage the 11th and 12th-fastest times in Practice One respectively, and although Verstappen was able to improve to fourth-fastest in Practice Two, he was still over half a second off the quickest lap of 1:11.278 set by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

Reigning world champion Verstappen had struggled with issues at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix last week before going on to take his fifth victory of the 2024 season so far, but believes the problems experienced at Monaco cannot be solved by simply adjusting the car’s set-up as at Imola.

I don’t think I can even describe what is going on, it’s very difficult,” Verstappen said. “It’s something I didn’t expect, but it’s definitely at the higher end of the worst possible outcome of the weekend so far and it’s very difficult.

“There are a lot of bumps and curbs and camber changes as well on the track, and for us it is basically impossible to take.

Every time we go over it, we lose a lot of lap time because the car doesn’t ride it well and that is definitely hampering us to go faster. I think there is no real clear direction or solution for the weekend to try to solve something like that.

“These kinds of things, you cannot solve with set-up because that’s how the car is made and designed, you cannot change overnight. We are stuck with that, we’ll try to make it a bit better, but I’m not expecting any miracles.”