Verstappen seemed to lose his cool completely on the team radio and expressed his disappointment with how things turned out.
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When reigning Formula One champion Max Verstappen lined up in second on the grid, moments before the commencement of the Bahrain GP on Sunday, he would have at least expected a podium finish for himself, and both Red Bull cars scoring points. Things did not quite go to plan for the Dutchman. A power steering issue caused the champion to retire three laps before the end of the race and an engine failure for Sergio Perez saw Red Bull Racing completely out of the points. To say Verstappen was disappointed would be an understatement. He seemed to lose his cool completely on the team radio and expressed his disappointment with how things turned out after the race.
“Of course you can always say problems can happen and you might have a retirement,” the world champion said as per Sky Sports. “But I think at this level, after already having so much information with engines and stuff, it shouldn’t happen. We already lost a lot of points again in one race weekend, so that’s just really not good, but of course I know that with one retirement it’s not over, but I would have preferred to have 18 points,” he added.
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Verstappen looked set to finish in second place, between the two Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz but that was not how the night turned out ultimately. Perez’s retirement on the final lap allowed Lewis Hamilton to win an unexpected podium.
“We were basically on the podium, we hold back Lewis, which was really tough, he was really fast at the end, and a bit of a shame really that we didn’t get that result,” Verstappen continued. “We are a great team and I really believe in them and I’m sure we will get to the bottom of it. It’s a very disappointing day, a very disappointing start for our season but we know how long Formula One years can be.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was asked about what the problem was with the cars, but he did not seem to have a definitive answer at the time. “[It was] a brutal finish to that race for us,” he said. “What looked like a decent haul of points suddenly evaporated in the last couple of laps.”
“It looks like a similar issue on both cars. We don’t know exactly what it is yet, whether it’s a lift pump, whether it’s a collector or something along those lines, but we’ve got to get into it and understand exactly what’s caused it.”
