Windsor says qualifying will be 'incredibly close', but Red Bull looks strong

It promises to be an exciting qualifying session today at Zandvoort. Ferrari looked fast on Friday, Mercedes also did well and Max Verstappen already announced that he hasn't shown everything yet because of the red flags.

In his new YouTube video, Peter Windsor analyses the teams' speed and talks about the traffic at Zandvoort. "My fear is that with those fast corners down, following other cars very difficult and there’s so much traffic. Formula one cars really look a bit out of place there. It’s not as tight as Monaco but they look too big for Zandvoort. I’m not being negative, they just are and there’s so much traffic and the lap is so relatively short. We’re talking one minute 10, 9. That traffic is going to be an issue and overtaking is going to be an issue."

One thing is clear to Windsor: The Dutch GP must become the party of Max Verstappen. "Zandvoort 2021 Dutch Grand Prix should be a Max fest, shouldn’t it. That’s what’s everybody’s expecting, although Lewis is doing a good job getting the crowd fired up behind him as well. The Dutchmen of course are thirsty for F1, they've had Max for the last four or five years and now they have a Grand Prix. They want it all to happen, they want it now."

Qualifying will be exciting according to Windsor

Unfortunately for the fans in attendance, Verstappen was not yet the fastest on Friday. "The two Ferrari’s first and second, which was a bit of a shock because they weren’t that quick in FP1 in the morning. They weren’t bad, they were thereabouts but if you think about it, it’s a circuit that doesn’t have any really demanding corners for the cars and it doesn’t really favour high downforce or low downforce. It’s sort of a medium to high downforce circuit anyway and Ferrari is a good sort of medium average car with a very good pair of drivers. You’ve only got to give them a free lap and a team like Ferrari is going to be right there. I think they were really quick and they did a very good job."

Ferrari, Mercedes or still Red Bull? "It’s going to be incredibly close because all the guys out there are very quick and given free laps they’re all going to put in quick laps in qualifying. So it’s all going to come down to traffic certainly in Q1, probably in Q2, maybe even in Q3 actually. Max looks the quickest on heavy fuel or long runs and it's looking very good overall for Red Bull Honda," Windsor said.