The Milton Keynes team had a pretty quiet weekend in Barcelona

It was a pretty anonymous weekend for both Red Bull Racing drivers at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

Despite being judged as having the best internal combustion engine element of their new power-unit, the team from Tilbrook looked a way off the leading three teams Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren in Spain, with Max Verstappen coming home fourth while team-mate Isack Hadjar came sixth.

It was a pretty lonely afternoon for the Dutchman, never really able to strike the drivers ahead of him, while keeping a relatively comfortable cushion to Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc behind him.

“We just didn’t have the pace to keep up with the cars ahead,” he said afterwards. “I was really just doing my own race as we were a little bit behind the guys that finished in front of me.

“As a team we did everything right, it was the winning strategy, so we made the right call there with the tyres. We were just too slow compared to the cars ahead on each compound, unfortunately.

“We tried our best and put everything into it but ultimately the whole weekend was a bit tough for us. We do struggle more with these high energy tracks with high degradation and we just need to work on things and try to find more pace in the upcoming races.”

Hadjar did well to recover after a poor start saw him engulfed by a lot of the field off the line. Battling back through, the Frenchman, who lost his Monaco podium to Pierre Gasly after an appeal ahead of the weekend, managed to climb back into the points scoring positions, benefitting from late retirements to Leclerc and championship leader Kimi Antonelli to get back into sixth spot.

He said: “I felt like I had good pace this weekend once we got to Qualifying and the race, but I had a shocker at the race start with so much wheelspin, so that’s one aspect I really want to focus on before the next race.

“We could have fought with Oscar if we had a good start, so it’s a bit of a shame. I think we did way better than we thought we would this weekend given the track layout and conditions.

“Austria will be a better track for us, and we expect to have a stronger car. We just need to work on the starts.”