Max Verstappen says he simply wants to have fun at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, amid Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg's showdown for the Formula One world championship.
Both Red Bull and Ferrari could still play a major role in the outcome of the 2016 title, if either team can get split the Mercedes drivers at Yas Marina. While Verstappen was over 0.5s off Hamilton's leading time in FP2, the fight between Red Bull and Ferrari over the second row looks much closer.
The Dutchman and teammate Daniel Ricciardo proved to be Mercedes' nearest challenges in FP1, but both dropped behind Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel as night fell in the second session. When asked what his aim is for the weekend, Verstappen replied: "Have fun, that is my target."
He added: "It will be tight. I think Ferrari is quite strong this weekend but I am pretty sure we can be even stronger so let's see. We always tend to improve from Friday to Saturday so I am pretty sure today was not that bad. I am looking forward to tomorrow as it will be close and hopefully we can have a clean qualifying.
"We are not too far off and of course Ferrari looks pretty strong as well. On my fast lap I had traffic at the last corner so I'm pretty sure we are close so it will be an exciting qualifying tomorrow."
F1's youngest winner was forced to abandon a late run during FP2, but says he is not concerned by the as yet undiagnosed issue.
"We are checking now what the exact issue was, that is why we aborted the last run to check. Nothing is broken and I am pretty sure they can solve it for tomorrow but it is better to stop early.
"It just came with the issues we had at the end and before that it was all okay. Then something happened, I don't know what yet, so we are investigating now but before that everything was fine."
When asked whether Red Bull's best chance of taking the fight to Mercedes on Sunday would be by undercutting Hamilton and Rosberg and the first round of stops, Verstappen replied: "Yes, but they are not stupid. The problem is you can try to undercut but you will come back on track in traffic and then it doesn't work.
"There are a lot of factors that will play into that but I think the most important thing for us is to be as close as we can in qualifying to at least race them. We have to wait and see, I think they are very strong and in qualifying they turn up their engines as well."