The data that shows Verstappen is facing a home race battle

“In FP2, you could see a little bit more where you are and yeah - bit too slow on the short run, bit too slow on the long run, so a bit of work to do. At the moment, no clear answer of how to improve that specifically, but we'll look into things. Bit too slow, simple as that."

Those were the words of Max Verstappen after the second practice session at Zandvoort. 

The Dutchman ended the session in fifth place, conceding three-tenths to George Russell around the short, tight track. Mercedes, as well as McLaren, were ahead of Verstappen with both cars on the time sheet.

The lap times show there is work to be done for Red Bull, who has faced a challenge from its rivals of late with Verstappen's last win coming just over two months ago.

However, the day could have been worse from Red Bull, which was highlighted by Helmut Marko who revealed the team was not driving with full engine power.

Comparing the sector times, Verstappen lost most of his lap time in the opening two sectors, which contain fast corners as well as the  DRS zones. In the short sector 3, Verstappen is slightly faster than Russell.

See the qualifying runs of Verstappen and Russell below. The article continues after that.

Long runs

In the long runs, it's Verstappen and Red Bull that must close a gap to the competition, which seems to be becoming a tradition.

Red Bull entered the weekend ready to deploy experiments in a bid to discover more about the car, which was evident during Verstappen's long run. 

The 26-year-old drove 19 laps with a heavy fuel load and also switched from Mediums to Softs during the stint. Comparing to Norris, simply looking at the lap times could create the impression that Verstappen was four to six-tenths down on Norris on average. However, Norris used DRS during his long run, distorting the difference to his Red Bull rival.

On the Softs, Russell's pace was matched by Verstappen who managed to keep his tyres alive for longer.  Russell's lap times shot into the 1:17 range fairly quickly, while Verstappen continued to record steady lap times of 1:15. Oscar Piastri also posted similar lap times to Verstappen on Softs.

It appears Red Bull is still a tad behind McLaren and Mercedes, but with minor tweaks here and there, a fourth win in a row for Verstappen on home soil could still be a possibility.

View the long runs of Verstappen, Norris and Russell below.