Senior figures at Red Bull held crisis talks after the Bahrain Grand Prix finished with a deeply dissatisfied Max Verstappen languishing in sixth place. But the team principal, Christian Horner, admitted there will be no quick fix.
Horner conceded the team have problems that need to be addressed as soon as possible, but said: “This race has exposed some pitfalls that are obviously very clear that we need to get on top of very quickly. Ultimately you can mask it a little through setup and we were able to achieve that last weekend in Suzuka. We understand where the issues are, it’s introducing the solutions that obviously take a little more time.”
The technical director, Pierre Waché, the motorsport adviser, Helmut Marko, and the chief engineer, Paul Monaghan, convened along with Horner to address the problems that have beset them and given Verstappen a mountain to climb in his title defence.
Marko described the performance as “very alarming” and told German TV “the concern is great”. Verstappen, who said “everything went wrong that could go wrong”, could even consider his future at another team. Marko had previously made a point of emphasising that the Dutchman has a performance-related escape clause in his contract. Sky’s Ted Kravitz reported witnessing Verstappen’s manager, Raymond Vermeulen, angrily confronting Marko in the team’s garage after the race on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton and the Ferrari team principal, Fred Vasseur, believe they are making positive steps to improve this season. They both viewed Hamilton’s effort as a better performance, with both parties becoming better attuned to one another. Hamilton finished fifth at the Sakhir circuit in a race won in dominant style by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. It was the British driver’s best grand prix result with the Scuderia since joining this year.
Charles Leclerc, Hamilton’s teammate, was fourth but, while the Ferrari remained off the pace of McLaren and Mercedes, it was an improvement after a slow start to the season. Hamilton suggested he was becoming accustomed to the new team and car after 12 years with Mercedes.
“I think I’ve figured out how the car likes to drive so, if I apply that next week, if I can qualify better, I’ll have a much better weekend,” he said. “Finally we were in a spot and my driving style seemed to be working in that moment and so I learned a lot this weekend, probably more than all the other weekends.”
Similarly, Vasseur said that their working partnership was progressing positively and that he expected both team and driver to improve further. “You won’t replace 12 years of collaboration in two weeks or two races,” he said. “We need to improve but this is true for everybody in the paddock. The DNA of our sport is for everybody to do a better job. It’s good to have Lewis with this mindset: ‘I have to improve myself, and to adapt myself to the car.’ We will adapt the car to Lewis but he also has to make a step.”
after newsletter promotion
Vasseur has dealt with similar openings to the last two seasons, wielding calm control as the team bring the car up to pace, adapting to the misstep of upgrade setbacks mid-season last year and managing to repeatedly finish with a race winner. After Bahrain he remained convinced the team and Hamilton would do the same again.
“In terms of management we have to take it a bit easy, to calm down, we have ups and downs as everybody. The issue is probably that the ups for us are a bit higher and the downs are a bit lower,” he said. “It means if we want to keep a consistent approach, and we did it very well the last two years, we have to stay calm, try to improve by hundredths of a second. I’m convinced we’ll do the same job as we did the last two years.”
