'Satisfied' Max Verstappen drops an interesting demand for Red Bull to challenge at the front in the F1 Singapore GP

Max Verstappen feels tiny details like improvement in front and rear grip overnight could potentially put him in contention to fight at the front in the F1 Singapore GP. The Dutch driver came to the race on the back of two consecutive race wins, hence, leading to higher expectations.

At the same time, however, since the nature of the track is quite different from what we had at the last two races, there was always a level of skepticism involved. Unlike the low-downforce tracks like Monza and Baku, Singapore is a high-downforce track, and in those conditions, Red Bull has struggled compared to McLaren.

The first day of running, however, revealed that Max Verstappen was more or less on pace with the McLaren duo, and the gap wasn't much. At the end of the day, Oscar Piastri led the timesheets, but Max Verstappen was just around a tenth behind, which is not a big gap.

Talking to F1TV after the day, Max Verstappen said that he was more or less satisfied with how the day went and needed just a little more pace to compete with the frontrunners. When pushed on what he would want, the driver emphasized small improvements that eventually helped with improving tire life and hence the ability to push more on a flying lap. He said,

"It was not too bad. I think FP1 started quite nicely, we were just getting up to speed with things but the car was not too bad. A bit like the last two weekends where there were no major problems and then in FP2, a few things that we tried, some were good so we just need to try and optimise that a bit more. Overall and in general, quite satisfied but definitely need a bit more pace to fight up at the front tomorrow."

He added,

"Tiny details. Front grip, rear grip, keeping the tyres alive throughout the lap. Around here, the tyres overheat a lot, so all those things just need to be a little bit better and hopefully that will be a bit more in the window and then you can push also a bit harder."

Max Verstappen's teammate's contrasting day of running

Max Verstappen's teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, didn't have as clean a day. His first push on the soft tires was interrupted when Liam Lawson's crash brought out the red flag. Even afterwards, the driver was a few tenths behind his teammate and behind quite a few midfield cars. The fact that Isack Hadjar was in P2 at the end of the day was also not a good look for the Japanese driver, who said,

"Tough, been able to have a smooth session I would say for everyone. It's the kind of trend that FP2 [you're] never able to have a clean session so it's really p***** me off. But that's life, just stay calm and optimise the set-up. That's it."

It is quite intriguing to see where Max Verstappen ends up in the pecking order because if he does end up beating Oscar Piastri in qualifying, that's going to be a big blow in the championship sweepstakes.