Like a disturbance in the ‘Force’ for a Jedi in Star Wars, I felt a collective shudder from the Formula 1 paddock as Max Verstappen topped the first day of 2024 pre-season testing.
While his time was well off his 2023 pole lap of 1m29.708s, he was 1.5s quicker than the lap he set on the opening day of testing last year. And over a second clear of everyone else today!
Design genius Adrian Newey has really pushed the boat out with the RB20’s radical sidepod intakes, and while it would be foolish to read too much into the headline times, Verstappen’s high lap count shows there’s no obvious overheating issues with such a tightly-packaged car.
The opposition knows it has a mountain to scale just to catch up right now, never mind beat him… By: Charles Bradley, Global Editor in Chief
Motorsport.com | 
