Max Verstappen was left at a loss for words after a challenging Bahrain Grand Prix.
It’s uncommon to see Max Verstappen battling for sixth place during the closing laps of a Formula 1 race.
However, that was the reality for the Red Bull driver as the Bahrain Grand Prix unfolded on Sunday. Following a tough qualifying session that left Verstappen starting from P7, everything seemed to go awry the moment the race began.
“Basically everything went wrong!” Verstappen declared after the race during an interview with the official F1 channel. “We had a poor start, too much wheelspin when I dropped the clutch, and then the first stint again [I had] basically the same problems that I had in Qualifying, plus we were just overheating our tires too much compared to the competition ahead of us.”
Starting the race on soft tires, Red Bull made the decision to pit Verstappen on Lap 10 to switch to hard tires. Unfortunately, the situation worsened after that, beginning with complications in the pit lane, followed by issues with the hard tires not performing as expected on track.
“Then [at] the first stop I think the lights got stuck on, but of course I don’t want to drive through the lights – you want to stay and stick to the protocol of the team – so that put me into traffic as well, then the hard tires unfortunately didn’t work so I was sliding around even more than I was on the soft,” Verstappen recounted.
“Then we boxed again, [which was an] even worse pit stop, so then I was last. And, yeah, considering everything, to be honest to finish P6 is then alright. I mean, more than that was anyway not possible even with good pit stops or other tires selected, realistically.
“It’s of course not what we want, but it’s just where we are at with our car and the tire behavior that we have with the car. Everything is just highlighted even more on a track like this.”
Verstappen managed to recover and overtook Pierre Gasly for sixth place on the final lap of the race, but battling for sixth place at the end of a race is unfamiliar territory for the Red Bull driver.
This result places him third in the Drivers’ Championship, looking up at both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, whose victory in Bahrain elevated him to second in the standings.
“You have to hang on, try to improve the situation, but it was just a bit stuck at the moment and hopefully we can improve soon,” Verstappen concluded.
We’ll see if that improvement starts next weekend in Saudi Arabia.
