Verstappen is still searching for the "right balance" in his heavily-updated Red Bull

Red Bull experienced a mixed opening day at its home Austrian Grand Prix, with technical problems disrupting the first practice session before the team recovered to show encouraging pace later in the day.

Although Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar both finished inside the top seven in FP2, neither driver was completely satisfied with the balance of the RB22, leaving the Milton Keynes-based squad with important setup work ahead of qualifying.

The team's Friday got off to the worst possible start when a late engine change delayed Hadjar's participation in the opening practice session.

More frustration followed shortly afterwards when Verstappen headed out for his first laps, only for his RB22 to come to a halt in the pit lane because of an anti-stall issue. After returning the car to the garage and carrying out repairs, Red Bull attempted to send the four-time World Champion back onto the circuit, but the same problem immediately reappeared, further limiting the team's valuable running.

Eventually, both cars returned to the track and Red Bull was able to salvage the remainder of FP1. Verstappen immediately demonstrated competitive pace once he switched onto the soft tyres, finishing fourth with a lap of 1:08.077 despite his interrupted session.

Reliability issues no longer troubled the team during FP2, allowing Verstappen to improve to a 1:07.564, once again ending the session in fourth place.

However, the Dutchman admitted that the RB22 still requires refinement before qualifying: “In the practice sessions today it was a little bit tricky to find the right balance. We need to work on our front to rear grip and find the right compromise there.

"This will help us find a little more pace as we are not quite there at the moment compared to the others. We will see what we can do tomorrow to find more stability in general and hopefully have a good Qualifying.”

Both Verstappen and Hadjar complained about the car's driveability, particularly under braking and traction through Turn 3, highlighting an area Red Bull will focus on overnight.

Hadjar endured an especially disrupted FP1 after his delayed start, finishing 12th with a lap of 1:09.481. Nevertheless, the French rookie made significant progress during the afternoon session, climbing to seventh place with a best time of 1:07.758 as the balance of the car improved.

Despite the encouraging improvement, Hadjar admitted Red Bull had not yet unlocked the full potential of its latest upgrade package.

“We struggled to extract the most out of the car and our upgrades today as it felt off balance. In FP1 we were a bit slow to get started, and struggled with grip so it was a bit of a guessing game, but balance felt better in FP2, so that’s good news.

"It felt a lot easier to drive, so the performance should come tomorrow, but we’re not where we want to be yet. We will need to do a lot of digging and work on the set up for tomorrow, but the car usually comes alive in Qualifying so hopefully we can find some good pace.”

Technical Director Pierre Waché explained that the opening day's difficulties were largely the result of Red Bull introducing significant changes to the car, making Friday an important learning exercise rather than a straightforward performance evaluation.

“We had an issue in the garage on both cars and FP1 was quite difficult, which can sometimes happen when you change so much of the car. In FP1 we were a bit limited with what we could do, especially on Isack’s car as he had less track time.

"We were trying to understand the car and the new package and we modified a few things on the set up in FP2: some were in the right direction and some were not.”

Although the updated package has shown promising signs, Waché admitted it remains too early to determine whether it is delivering exactly what the team had expected.

“We obviously have some work to do, which is the case when you change a few things on the car. There is a lot to learn but we hope we have a good path to Qualifying. It is difficult to say if the full package on the car is delivering what we expected. You only know your own performance and not what the car is doing in relation to the others, so we are quite happy with what we are doing.”

Looking ahead to the remainder of the weekend, Red Bull believes its race pace is encouraging, although further gains are still needed over a single qualifying lap.

“It is hard to say where we will end up on Sunday. The long runs were quite promising compared to what we did in Barcelona and clearly, in the short runs, we will need to improve. We are focusing on that and hopefully will see a positive outcome tomorrow.”