Red Bull fear 'sand in their eyes' from McLaren after spying Max Verstappen hope

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has spied an opportunity for Max Verstappen after showing signs of a clear improvement from the team's woe of 12 months ago.

Verstappen departed Monza last year by describing his RB20 as "an undriveable monster", and fearing for his hopes of landing a fourth F1 drivers' title in the face of the challenge from McLaren's Lando Norris. 

One year on, and while only Friday practice, Marko saw enough in Verstappen's all-round performance to indicate his driver will at least be in the mix, and that perhaps McLaren will not have it all their own way, as they did in Zandvoort last weekend.

Verstappen finished sixth quickest, two-tenths of a second behind pacesetter Norris, and 0.018s behind championship leader Oscar Piastri, whilst on the long runs, the RB21 showed strong pace.

"We are very satisfied," Marko told Sky DE. "In contrast to last year, there is a clear improvement. The long run was very good, but on the softs we still need to improve a bit for qualifying.

"However, the gap is not drastic. If McLaren doesn't put sand in our eyes, it could be very exciting."

There were moments of angst throughout the two Friday sessions for Verstappen, airing his woes in inimitable style over the radio to engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.

As Marko pointed out, though, "we tried things and went to the limit." He added: "That means we can test the limit faster and in terms of direction [of the setup] we're not as far off as sometimes in the past."

As is often the way, Marko indicated it is "about getting the tyre in the right working window."

Rather than scrabbling around trying to find what can often be a needle in a haystack, Marko found cause for optimism.

"We think we know where we need to intervene," he said. "And a deficit of just under two tenths is encouraging."