The Dutchman ended up well down the o🍷rder in ninth after aborting his qualifying simulation run following a mistake at Turn 10 that left him over six-tenths down on Lewis Hamilton’s benchmark time as the seven-time world champion led a Mercedes 1-2 in FP2.

Verstappen rounded out what appeared to be a tricky session by picking up damage to the right-hand side of his front wing after running wide over the kerbs a✨t Turn 8 during his race simulation, but he remained positive about Red Bull’s pꦛrospects.

“ꦏWe seem quite competitive,” Verstappen said after second practice.

“How competitive we’re goin🍌g to be tomorrow is always going to be a question mark but from our side, we were quite happy.

“Of course you always want to improve and you want to ♓do better but there was nothing weird going on today. So yeah, just have to make s🔴ure tomorrow, we’re out there.”

Asked about his moment at Turn 10, Ve🍃rstappen said: “[I was] just a little bit wide in Turn 10 and got onto the kerb.

“Overall, I think we had quite a good day. The car seems quite competitive, so looking forwar🐲d to tomorrow to try 𓄧and improve a bit further, but nothing too shocking today.”

Verstappen ended FP2 one place ahead of teammate Sergio Perez, who is also staying optimistic about Red Bull’s 💙chances for the rest of the weekend despite a difficult Friday.

“It was a tricky day,” Perez admi🤪tted. “These days with the limited practice we have, we had a couple of delays in both sessions, and that means weꦫ were rushing a bit into traffic and stuff like that.

“A lot of understanding and pace to be found tonight, especially over one lap as I think the long run pace looks stronger. We have to work and see what we are able to take for qualifying, give💙n how important it is here.

𒆙“Hopefully we are able to recover the pace tonight and we can be in the mix to𓆏morrow.”