It will be hard to beat that but we will try to close the gap,” Verstappen said. “(We’ll) see what the weather will give us tomorrow,” Verstappen said. “A bit tricky as expected around here,” Verstappen said, “just trying to find a balance from high to low speed. Leclerc was a similar margin ahead of Verstappen on both qualifying- and race-simulation runs. Norris was 0.217secs slower than Leclerc, and 0.014secs quicker than Sainz, who edged Verstappen by 0.052secs. But Russell said that Mercedes had been running a slightly different programme from normal trying to learn about the car. “We were definitely little bit further away than we would have expected.

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