fastest time in FP1<\/a> in Belgium, the first time he has topped a practice session in 2026. However, FP2 was not as smooth-sailing as the four-time champion ranted over the radio about his gear shifts.<\/p>\n\u201cMy God, these ******* shifts! Unbelievable, man, why are they so ****?! It\u2019s unacceptable, this. My God,\u201d he exclaimed in the early stages of the session.<\/p>\n
After finishing FP2 in third, Verstappen said to media that he is \u2018very sensitive\u2019 to changes in the car, and attributed the issues to a software upgrade rather than something more serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always very sensitive to these things because I want to work on that and improve it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there was a software upgrade, or downgrade, that it took a bit of time for the shifts to learn basically, and then it got a bit better again at the end. Some bits were working well, and other times it wasn\u2019t working, but overall the car has been in a decent window.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spa-Francorchamps challenging for energy management<\/p>\n
Verstappen went on to discuss the wider issues at play in Spa. Long straights and limited heavy braking will demand a lot from the new power units, therefore, managing energy and battery is crucial. <\/p>\n
Regardless, Verstappen seemed optimistic about the overall balance of the RB22 going into the final practice session of the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I didn\u2019t really have big problems. Probably in FP3 we will see a little bit more the real gap. Still, it\u2019s nothing shocking, it\u2019s expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a bit of a tough track with the energy management as well. It seems we are a bit slower on the straights compared to some of our competitors. But balance-wise, it\u2019s been quite OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen will be hopeful of mustering all the best he can from the Red Bull with qualifying commencing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen has explained why he let rip over team radio during FP2 for the Formula 1 Belgian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[15941,7,9868,9099,16231],"class_list":["post-29346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgiangp","tag-belgium","tag-f1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-redbull"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116941447964980285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}