Verstappen hails ‘solid start’ with Red Bull’s upgrades while Perez fires at....

Red Bull may not have topped the timesheets during the first practice sessions of the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend but it was an overall positive day for the squad, with Max Verstappen happy about the early performance of their upgrade package while Sergio Perez looked to have made progress during FP2.

The Milton Keynes outfit are one of many to have added updates to their car for the event at the Hungaroring, with the new parts including an updated front wing and changes to the rear brake duct

Verstappen ended both first and second practice in P2 on the timesheets and, asked at the end of Friday’s running for his thoughts on the upgrades, the Dutchman responded: “I think we had a good day with it, of course there’s still a lot to learn and optimise.

“But I think it was a solid start to the weekend, and now we’ll try to look into the details to try and make it a bit better.

“Also FP2 was a bit interrupted [by Charles Leclerc’s crash] so we didn’t get the full long runs in like we wanted to – of course it was the same for everyone but, yeah, we’ll look into things. I think it wasn’t a bad start to the weekend and, yeah, [we’ll] work from there

“I think we did a really good step from practice one to the afternoon,” Perez commented afterwards. “We took the right changes, the right direction and, yeah, feeling good. I think also the long run looked promising so, yeah, let’s see what the rest of the weekend throws at us.”

Reflecting on whether this is the most comfortable he has felt in recent times when heading into a weekend, the 34-year-old – who exited qualifying in Q1 last time out in Great Britain after beaching his car in the gravel – joked: “Silverstone I was happy after Friday, but, you know…

He then added: “I think yes. I think it’s been a very good Friday, especially with the direction we took with the steps we made through the day. That’s the best we can do and that’s what really matters, so that’s been really positive.”