Max Verstappen maintained a perfect performance in this year’s free practice sessions and set a convincingly fastest lap in the third free practice for the Bahrain GP, ​​with Pierre Gasly splitting the Mercedes drivers in third place for AlphaTauri.

Max Verstappen is quite happy with the start of the first weekend of the new Formula 1 season while his new teammate Sergio Perez admits he still doesn’t have enough pace in one fast lap because he doesn’t have enough feeling for the car yet.

Max Verstappen postavio je najbrže vrijeme i na drugom slobodnom treningu za prvu utrku sezone u Bahrainu, a Lando Norris razdvojio je njega i Lewisa Hamiltona na drugom mjestu za McLaren.

Max Verstappen set the fastest lap in the first free practice of the new 2021 F1 season, few minutes before the end of the session while Valtteri Bottas was second fastest for Mercedes.

Max Verstappen believes that Mercedes did not show their true speed in the pre-season tests and that he saw what were they doing and although Mercedes says that Red Bull is the favorite ahead of the first race of the season in Bahrain, the Dutchman does not want to accept that role.

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko believes that Mercedes is still the favorite despite not so good pre-season tests and believes that their actual performance was hidden by a much larger amount of fuel.

Max Verstappen is happy with the pre-season tests, which he described as 'definitely the best' since he was in Formula 1, but he is also cautious and aware that the true balance of power between the teams will be known only in the first race of the season in two weeks.

Mercedes chief engineer for track operations Andrew Shovlin says data from pre-season testing shows they are not as fast as Red Bull at the moment, but that by the first race of the season they will do their best to find more speed.

Max Verstappen set the fastest lap in this year’s pre-season testing for Red Bull in the second half of the third day while one of the stars of the day is debutant Yuki Tsunoda who was the second fastest in AlphaTauri.

Lewis Hamilton says that he is impressed with the speed of some rival teams and he especially praised the Red Bull team and thinks that they look very good before the start of the new season thanks to the speed of their car and stronger driver line-up.