Max Verstappen had the opportunity to take on Carlos Sainz for a little on-track action during the Friday afternoon session at the Bahrain circuit. With Sainz finishing the official test day as quickest man ahead of Verstappen, the two fastest drivers on Friday also had a short tussle for track position during the afternoon – a battle that Verstappen eventually came out ahead in as Sainz backed off. "It was fun to have a little battle with Carlos," Verstappen beamed after the session ended. "I think he was on a long run with more fuel and I was on a shorter run, and once I caught him he started using DRS – I think he wanted to race as well." Verstappen logged 86 laps of the circuit during the day, ending up with a fastest time of 1:34.011 set on the Soft C4 compound. "I think we did as good a job as we could today. It was very warm and there were quite a few red flags," he said afterwards. "It was quite a good day, all pretty standard, and we put quite a good amount of laps on the car. We won't really use these tyre compounds for the race, so again, it's not really representative. "So far, the car is pretty good, but there are always areas to work on."
"A day of making changes" for Red Bull
With the team concentrating on optimising the RB18 over the course of Friday, Red Bull's Head of Race Engineering, Guillaume Rocquelin, explained why the car spent large chunks of the day back in the garage. "It was more of a stop-start day today, mostly by design," he said. "We had a good, continuous run yesterday, so today was more about exploring and testing different things. "We spent more time in the garage making changes to the car and also taking more risks. We learned a lot and gathered a lot of information today. "I'm quite happy with what we found out; we are progressing in different directions and it's all very positive. "We were reasonably competitive at the end without even trying."
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