Fighting for sixth place is not offering where you will find Max Verstappen in the Closs Tour of a Formula 1 race.
But that is exactly where the Red Bull driver himself found when the rounds on Sunday checked the download in the Bahrain Grand Prix. After the qualification session of the difficulty ended with Verstappen that started the race in P7, everything went wrong for him from the moment the lights went out to start the Bahrain Grand Prix.
“In principle everything went wrong!” Verstappen explained after the race when he spoke with the official F1 channel. “We had a bad start, all the wheel spider when I dropped the coupling, and then the first stint again [I had] In short, the same problems I had with qualification, plus we were just too much overheating our tires with the competition for us. “
After starting the race on a set of soft tires, Red Bull Street Verstappen is in for a pit stop on round 10 to make the switch to a set of hards. But it only got worse for him from there, starting with a complication along Pit Lane, followed by the hard tires that just don’t work for him on the track.
“The [at] The first stop I think the lights were stuck, but of jobs even more around than I was on the soft ones, “Versopen added.
“The well again, [which was an] Even worse pit stop, so I was last. And yes, consider everything to be honest to complete P6 it is good. I mean, more than that laundry does not possess, not even with good pit stops or other selected tires, realistic.
“Of course it is not what we want, but it is exactly where we are with our car and the tire behavior that we have by car. Everything is just more on a job like this.”
Verstappen was able to recover and eventually pass Pierre Gasly for sixth place in the final round of the race, but again fighting for the sixth at the end of a race is unknown territory for the Red Bull driver.
Just like his current place in the driver’s championship, where he stands third, looking at Bush Lando Norris and Oscar Piestri, the victory in Bahrain brought him in second place in the rankings.
“You have to hold, try to improve the situation, but it was just a bit stuck at the moment and hopefully we can improve soon,” concluded Verstappen.
We will see if that improvement will start in Saudi Arabia next weekend.