Verstappen struggled to "find much balance in the car" on the opening day at Silverstone

On the back of his first-lap retirement from last Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, reigning champion Max Verstappen had a challenging opening day at Silverstone, but Red Bull might find a better setup for the upgraded RB21.

Red Bull looked to struggle in the opening session, with Max Verstappen running the new floor on his RB21. The Dutchman was left unhappy with many aspects of his car, calling it “unbelievable” on the radio.

His team-mate Yuki Tsunoda sat out the opening session as Red Bull's F2 driver Arvid Lindblad piloted his car in the opening one-hour session, making his F1 debut at a race weekend. The British driver delivered a tidy performance, having set a 1m27.958s which was good enough for P14 on the leaderboard.

Verstappen looked to be in better shape in the second session at the British Grand Prix. Alongside the Ferrari duo of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, Verstappen was the only front-runner to find more time on his second push lap on Pirelli's soft tyres to end up fifth in FP2.

“For me personally, today wasn’t a great day and it was difficult to find much balance in the car and in the corners," started Verstappen. "The wind affects things quite a lot but that, of course, is not an excuse as you just have to deal with it.

"It is not easy, but it is the same situation for everyone. Every weekend is a bit different and you have to adapt to the changing conditions and scenarios but our car does seem pretty sensitive to the wind this week.

"Looking to tomorrow, we can analyse our data and try and look at what we can do to improve, but I think overall we have just been lacking a bit of performance," concluded Verstappen.