Verstappen admits Red Bull "a bit too slow"

Verstappen and teammate Daniel Ricciardo wound up sixth and fifth respectively in second practice at Albert Park, over a full second off pace-setter Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes.

The session also appeared to confirm that Ferrari is ahead of Red Bull as well, with Sebastian Vettel finishing second and Kimi Raikkonen fourth.

Verstappen conceded it will be difficult for his team to beat its two main rivals this weekend.

"At the moment I think we are a bit too slow so we'll try to improve," said Verstappen. "I think Mercedes is again pretty quick, so it will be difficult to beat them.

"You can clearly see Mercedes is very quick and Ferrari should be the second team at the moment. I think we still need to do quite a lot of work to beat them.

"I think we are where I expected us to be, so we'll try to make the best of it."

Ricciardo: We can get closer

Teammate Ricciardo, who had been third in the morning, admitted that Red Bull had gone in the wrong direction with its set-up in the afternoon session.

"In the morning we looked pretty strong and then we did try to obviously go quicker in the afternoon, we made some changes - probably didn't work out the way Max and myself wanted or expected," he said.

The local hero is still confident Red Bull can find more pace overnight, however.

"I think we can still get more out of it," the Australian said. "I think this morning was promising, and we tried a few things this afternoon, it's fair to say they didn't work as much as we'd like so we'll probably go back a bit and then understand what we can do better for tomorrow.

"But, yeah, I think Mercedes sure is quick but it's more Lewis at the moment than Valtteri, so... Valtteri at the moment looks like he's in our group, or in a group with Ferrari... but I think we can be there.

"Pole would be a stretch, but I think we could be in that next little group."