Red Bull management hold crisis talks after Bahrain GP woes

Red Bull’s key management has held crisis talks after a disappointing Bahrain Grand Prix in which Max Verstappen finished a distant sixth.

After having qualified seventh in Sakhir the reigning world champion was powerless to move up the field, with Red Bull’s miserable car performance and handling issues compounded by struggling for pace on the unfavoured hard tyres.

Verstappen was dropped by Haas’ Esteban Ocon and passed by Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, falling to ninth. He made some progress after ditching the hards for used mediums and finished in sixth place, with team-mate Yuki Tsunoda in ninth.

But having finished 34 seconds behind McLaren’s winner Oscar Piastri, with multiple poor pitstops to compound Red Bull’s misery, the team held an impromptu meeting with its key personnel at the track to figure out its next steps, with attendees including team boss Christian Horner, advisor Helmut Marko, technical director Pierre Wache and chief engineer Paul Monaghan.

“It’s a very difficult day for Red Bull, that’s obvious to all of us,” Marko told reporters including Autosport after the talks.

“We have to get, as soon as possible, performance in the car again and also standards like a pitstop have to work. The car is not the fastest and then the pitstops are not working. That is not acceptable.”

When asked by Autosport how concerning Red Bull’s Bahrain faux-pas was, Marko replied: “Very alarming. We know that we are not competitive and there will be parts coming in the coming races and hopefully they bring improvement.

“We have a lot of problems. The main problem is balance and grip. And out of this, so I guess the problems with the brakes came up. And then the normal procedure like a pitstop is not working, so one [issue] comes after the other.”

Verstappen commented: “Everything went wrong that could go wrong. The pace was very bad. We have our problems, and even if you win a race that doesn’t go away, so we just keep discussing and keep trying to improve.”