APRIL 11, 2019

Red Bull's mistake

The reason Red Bull was off the pace in the Bahrain Grand Prix was because the team made a mistake on the set-up of the chassis.

Max Verstappen, Bahrain GP 2019
© RV Press

By Dan Knutson in Shanghai

The reason Red Bull was off the pace in the Bahrain Grand Prix was because the team made a mistake on the set-up of the chassis.

"We understood already a lot in testing (after the race)," Max Verstappen reveled to reporters in the paddock in Shanghai. "We also found out that we made a mistake with the set up. The whole week unfortunately. That's what went wrong, that's what we found.

The mistake was on the mechanical set-up of the chassis not the aerodynamic side.

"It was just because it was windy throughout the whole weekend," Verstappen elaborated. "I was never happy with the balance; we always tried to correct it but never got it. Of course with what we found (in testing), we could understand a bit more why we couldn't find a good balance."

That was one of the reasons Verstappen could not get the maximum performance out of the soft Pirelli tires.

"In general it wouldn't help," he said. "Especially if you have the soft tires and you're sliding that much, you're overheating them."

If everything was perfect, would Red Bull be close to Mercedes and Ferrari?

"If everything is perfect, we would be a lap ahead!" Verstappen quipped.

"I think if we could find a good balance with the car, we could be fighting closer yes, and for sure we would've finished third in Bahrain," he added.

What about this weekend's race in China?

"It's another grand prix, so a lot of things can happen," the Red Bull driver said. "We just have to make sure that we can be on top of what we can control, and then we'll see how competitive we're going to be. It'll be a simple fix what went wrong there (in Bahrain) but then we need to see how the rest of the car behaves."