SPIELBERG, Austria -- Max Verstappen was one of a number of drivers who damaged their cars on the Red Bull Ring's kerbs during Friday practice for the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver finished the second practice session with the fifth fastest time after failing to improve on his lap in FP1. He later revealed that he had damage to his floor in the second session and a temporary fix was applied on Friday before a new floor is fitted ahead of final practice and qualifying.
"I don't think it was a perfect day as we had a damaged floor, something broke off the inside of the floor, so my second practice session I had to run with a floor that was a little bit cut or modified," he said.
There are a number of large yellow kerbs beyond the normal red and white kerbing at the Red Bull Ring, but Verstappen believes his damage was a result of vibrations through the chassis rather than a direct strike against the kerb.
"It was not from the outside sausage kerb it is on the inside so I guess it is from the vibrations or whatever. It was an old floor so we will put on a new one tomorrow but today we had to be a bit limited on that which definitely compromised the downforce of my car.
"I think in general it was not the best day but there is still room for improvement. We know that we lose quite a bit of time on the straights and even though there is a third DRS zone it is still a bit too much. Still some work."
Teammate Daniel Ricciardo lost part of his front wing riding over the kerbs but believes it is only right the track punishes drivers for running wide.
"I keep being asked about the kerbs; I actually damaged a bit of the front wing this morning on a kerb, but I think they are a good thing," he said. "It's our job to stay off them and at least it's a track limit. Some of these modern circuits that don't have walls don't really have a limit, I don't think this is a bad alternative and at least it has an impact."
Toro Rosso driver Pierre Gasly also damaged his car on the kerbs at Turn 9, seeing him run wide at Turn 10 and into the gravel. The team's chief engineer Jonathan Eddols explained that the front left trackrod failed as his car ran over the kerbs.
"This track is tough on cars, particularly given the number of exit kerbs, the yellow sausage kerbs are quite harsh as well, so with both drivers pushing hard and using every last part of the track we sustained some damage to bodywork components," he said. "More significant was the trackrod failure in FP2 at the end of Pierre's long run. He was closing the lap and coming up on the two Force Indias -- who were just starting their laps -- when he had a big front wash out from their dirty air and hit the yellow kerbs.
"This overloaded the trackrod and caused the failure. The mechanics did a great job to get the car repaired and back out on track for the long run at the end of the session, so Pierre wasn't compromised too much in terms of track running."