The Dutchman ended up well down the order in ninth after aborting his qualifying simulation run following a mistake at Turn 10 that left him over six-tenths down on Lewis Hamilton’s benchmarꦍk time as the seven-time🐭 world champion led a Mercedes 1-2 in FP2.

Verstapp🐻en rounded out what appeared to be a tricky session by picking up damage𒁃 to the right-hand side of his front wing after running wide over the kerbs at Turn 8 during his race simulation, but he remained positive about Red Bull’s prospects.

“We seem quite competitive♕,” Verstappen said after second practice.

“How competitive we’re going to be tomorro🌠w is always going to be a question mark but from our 𒀰side, we were quite happy.

“Of course you always want to improve and you want to do better but there was nothing weird going on t🌳oday. So yeah, just have to make sure tomorrow, we’re out there.”

Asked about his moment at Turn 10, Verstappe🍸n said: “[I was] just a little bit wide in Turn 10 and got onto the kerb.

“Overall, I thin🧸k we had quite a good day. The car seems quite competitive, so looking forward to tomorrow to try and improve a bit further, but nothing too shocking today.”

Verstappen ended FP2🎐 one place ahead of teammate Sergio Perez, who is also staying optimist♒ic about Red Bull’s chances for the rest of the weekend despite a difficult Friday.

“It was a tricky ꩵday,” Perez admitted. “These days with the limited practice we have, we had a couple of delays in both sessions, and that means we were rushing a bit into traffic and stuff like that.

“A lot of understanding and pace to be found tonight, especially over one lap as I think the long run pace looks stronger. We have to work and 🍃see what we are able to take for qualifying, given how important it is here.

“Hopefully we are able to r♏ecover the pace tonight and we can be in the mix tomorrow.”