Max Verstappen admits he's lacking 'trust' in Red Bull as Yuki Tsunoda caught off guard

Max Verstappen said he is lacking trust in his Red Bull car after the first day of running at the Japanese Grand Prix. The Dutchman's comments do not bode well for the team's chances of success at Suzuka this weekend after an already disrupted build-up.

They have a new driver line-up, of course, following the decision to drop Liam Lawson and promote Yuki Tsunoda to take his place. But that has not magically solved their biggest problem at the moment - their temperamental and difficult-to-drive car.

Even four-time Formula 1 champion Verstappen has struggled to produce his best form so far this year. And he isn't feeling much better about his machine after a tricky day of practice on Friday, going fifth fastest in FP1 and eighth in the second session of the day which was heavily disrupted by four red flags.

And speaking at the end of the day's running he rather glumly said: "It was a pretty tough day today. We tried a lot, but it didn't really come together. You need a lot of trust and commitment here, but I don't feel that at the moment.

"Today has been quite difficult for me. I've been trying a lot of different things with the car, but it seems a lot of things are not really clicking at the moment.

"It's quite difficult just to put the lap down. You need a lot of confidence around here and, at the moment, I don't feel like I can use that, so we still have quite a bit of work to do."

His new team-mate Tsunoda impressed with a time just one-tenth of a seconds slower than Verstappen's best effort in FP2, but did not manage to set a time in the later session because of all the disruption. He sounded more positive than the Dutchman but admitted he was caught off guard by how different the car felt compared to his practice time in the simulator this week.

The Japanese racer said: "FP1 was better than expected, a good start for myself. In FP2 I didn't set a lap time, I think there is lots of work to do. Maybe slightly struggled, or something that we have to look through the data from FP2 more. But overall, it's okay. I just have to build up the confidence more.

"It's a bit different to the simulator, what I felt, to be honest. Maybe a little bit more than I expected in terms of car feeling. I knew anyway that it's always a bit different in the real car and it was just a bit more exaggerated in the real car, a bit more tricky."

Verstappen won the 2024 Suzuka race at a canter, leading a Red Bull one-two and finishing more than 20 seconds ahead of Carlos Sainz in third place. But McLaren look the be the ones best placed to repeat such a result after dominating proceedings on Friday.

Lando Norris won the first race of the year while team-mate Oscar Piastri followed that up with victory last time out in Shanghai. The Brit topped the timesheets at the end of FP1 before going second quickest in the second session of the day behind only the Aussie.