Retrospective of Red Bull about Race day in Bahrain

Verstappen struggled for pace on the soft tyre yet again, coming under pressure from Sainz. Those two collided in a racing incident, the Dutchman fortunate to escape without damage. After a lonely race, he started to hunt down the stricken Leclerc before the safety car ruined his chances of snatching a podium. Gasly kept out of trouble in the midfield, profiting from the mistakes of others to work his way into the points.

Max Verstappen, 4th

“I think we maximised the result today and it was another good point’s score. To finish fourth was not too bad as we struggled with pace and rear grip, especially with the high winds. I was sliding around a lot so it was not easy and I just had to manage it, but I don’t think we could have done a lot differently. I drove to the limit of the car, in Australia it was better but here it was pretty difficult. We were almost on the podium today but it would have been down to luck as we didn’t have the true paceand really deserve it. Anyway, it was more unfortunate for Charles, but at least he’s still on the podium and I’m not too disappointed with fourth. We still have a lot of things to learn about the car so we will go back to the factory, understand what happened here and continue to try and close the gap in China. This just wasn’t our weekend.”

Pierre Gasly, 8th

“It was quite a difficult race and I’m still not completely comfortable with the car. As soon as I try to push, I struggle a lot with the rear and the traction. For sure, I need to see what I can improve to get the maximum out of the car and work with the engineers to see what we can do to make me feel more confident, because at the moment I feel I cannot really push. I need to make an effort and adapt, because each car is different, and I will work with the team to find a set-up which fits my driving style better. Overall, I think there are also some positives today. After the start the car felt better, I managed to finish inside the points, and now we just need to find the areas we can improve on. We will do the work and I’ll do anything I can to arrive stronger in China.”

Christian Horner, Team Principal

“It was a tough race this evening in Bahrain in extremely windy conditions. We seem to have struggled to get the tyres to work at their optimum all weekend and we experienced the same challenge during the race today. Nonetheless, Max made a good recovery at the first corner and raced very hard, but we just didn’t have the pace to go with Mercedes or Ferrari. He was unfortunate to miss out on what would have been an opportunistic podium following Charles Leclerc’s bad luck but hopefully there will be more podiums to come soon. Pierre drove a solid race to score his first points for the Team, finishing eighth, and making good progress through the pack. He displayed his race craft with a couple of bold overtaking moves, which will be good for his confidence, but the Safety Car at the end prevented him from progressing further as he was rapidly closing in on the cars ahead.”