Max Verstappen claimed that his Red Bull felt like "driving on ice" after struggling in Friday practice ahead of his potential coronation at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. 

Verstappen entered the weekend hoping to leave with a fourth world title, but a fifth and 17th place finish in the opening practice sessions suggested it would be far from easy. 

The Dutchman posted a soft-tyre lap just before Alex Albon caused a red flag midway through the second session, with Verstappen unable to improve on his time after that. 

It left him two seconds off the pace set by the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, revealing that the cold temperatures had an effect on his tyres. 

"For me, it feels massively tyre-related. The balance of the car is not even wrong, I think," he said. "We just have no grip, like driving on ice at the moment."

“Yeah, [it was] slippery. I think we struggled a lot with making the tyres work, over one lap especially.

“The long run I think started off a bit more competitive, but even there I think we need to fine-tune a few things. The one-lap pace is quite far off.

“It’s quite unique conditions around here, and it’s very cold, but at the end of the day it’s the same for everyone, so we need to try and understand what we’re doing wrong."

Thursday in Vegas: complete #F1 || #LasVegasGP pic.twitter.com/y2gOEFF88v

— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) November 22, 2024

Red Bull were down in the speed traps and Helmut Marko revealed the team had the wrong rear wing which has put them on the back foot.

However, after topping the timesheets in both practice sessions, Hamilton was left mystified by Mercedes’ surprisingly strong pace after a poor showing in Interlagos last time out.

The seven-time world champion clocked the fastest lap of the day as drivers up and down the grid struggled to extract performance around the low-grip track.

His team-mate George Russell was similarly impressive, finishing in P2 and P3 across the two sessions to indicate that Mercedes are the team to beat this weekend. 

“I mean that’s the first time I’ve had a day like that this year. The car was feeling generally good in FP1, in FP2 less so," Hamilton said. 

“Difficult to know exactly where we are or why we are where we are but really enjoying driving the track and I think we’ll see whether the car is the same tomorrow.

“The race pace is not that great so the work we have to do overnight is to figure out how to have better race pace without losing actual pace throughout the lap.

"But it was nice to get like consecutive sectors, and the car not throwing me off which was nice."