Honda: "There is still room for improvement for qualifying and race"

It was a positive day for Red Bull Racing and Honda as the Belgian Grand Prix weekend got underway. Max Verstappen was able to top the timesheets in FP2 and Toyoharu Tanabe admitted the day went pretty smoothly.

"The first day of practice for the Belgian Grand Prix went fairly smoothly with both our teams and we got through our programme, as fortunately there was no real rain today," explained Toyoharu Tanabe on Friday afternoon. "However, we lost a little bit of time in FP1 while damage to Gasly’s car was repaired. Therefore, we have had a good start to our weekend."

Honda anticipates bad weather

FP2 was particularly fruitful for Honda as Red Bull started to show what they were capable of. Verstappen was fastest and Alexander Albon was fourth behind by less than four-tenths. That gap has been bigger in recent weeks. Honda thinks there's more in the barrel for tomorrow.

"Of course we do not know what programmes the other teams are running on a Friday, but we are quite happy in terms of our performance and we have plenty of data to analyse tonight, to help us prepare for the rest of the weekend. There is still room to improve for qualifying and the race and the weather could play an important role."