Troublesome weekend for Red Bull as they struggle in Bahrain

Red Bull Racing’s struggled were highlighted in Bahrain as they limped to the lesser points under the Sakhir lights on Sunday.

After his win in Japan a week earlier, world champion Max Verstappen looked out of sorts all weekend, qualifying seventh en route to a sixth place finish. Yuki Tsunoda, in only his second start for the team, came home in ninth, scoring his first points since his move.

Throughout the Grand Prix weekend, both drivers complained of various issues in the RB21, with overheating, understeer and general drive complaints hampering their pace.

For Verstappen, finishing sixth was as good as he could have expected after several ailments hindered him throughout the race.

“We struggled with tyre management all race, and I had no grip or pace on the hard tyres,” he said afterwards. “During our pit-stops there was a problem with the lights which cost us a lot of time in the pits and put us back in to traffic.

“Unfortunately our second pitstop was worse than the first and at one point I was in last place. I enjoyed the fight at the end with Pierre Gasly and the overtake on the last lap, I tried to maximise our points until the very end.

“To finish P6 at the end was the best that we could do, this was not the weekend that we wanted but we have to keep on trying to improve. We are working on finding solutions and solving the issues we have at the moment to hopefully be more competitive in Jeddah."

For Tsunoda, he put the race down to experience, adding: “ I feel like I could have done better, there are still a lot of things we could have done better together and the pit-stop issues lost us position. The pace was good, but I am not fully happy because I still think we could have made up a couple of more positions.

“It’s only my second race and things come up that you haven’t experienced before, so it’s good a lot of new things are happening in this early phase, so I can maximise things in the future.

“Overall, it’s my first points with the team, so it has to be a positive day. I feel like we took a step forward from Suzuka, so I appreciate how the team have supported me and how we have been able to progress in a good way so quickly.”