Max Verstappen believes Red Bull have made progress in understanding why they weren’t competitive in the Bahrain Grand Prix following today’s test at the venue.
Although Verstappen finished Sunday’s race in fourth position he was as much as 44 seconds behind the race leader at one point before the Safety Car was deployed. However he believes the team made useful progress with its car on Tuesday.“It’s been a bit rainy,” said Verstappen after setting the quickest time of the day, “but in general I think we did a good amount of laps to understand what went wrong on the weekend.
“We learned a lot already from it so in that way I think it’s very positive. We don’t have that many days anyway to really understand the car and during a weekend it all goes that quick. You’re just always doing one-and-a-half hour sessions, it’s not amazing. To have a day like this was very helpful.”
Verstappen said it was clear the team “did something wrong during the weekend” and expects they will be more competitive in the Chinese Grand Prix.
“Well it cannot be worse than what we showed here,” he said. “We made some mistakes I think in terms of set-up.
“I think if you look back to Australia we were actually quite happy. I mean of course it was still 20 seconds to Valtteri but in that race I couldn’t go and push like I wanted to because basically I was held up by cars so I think we can do a lot better than what we’ve showed so far.”
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F1oSaurus (@)
2nd April 2019, 17:47
Is he missing a team mate like Ricciardo helping out on the setup?
Johnvl
2nd April 2019, 18:10
No
JB22
2nd April 2019, 18:59
Even Ricciardo admitted that Verstappen is the racing nerd in the team and he knows more about the technical stuff than him. So I’m pretty sure that if Verstappen can’t find the right settings with his engineers then the moneybadger wouldn’t find them either.
JohnH (@johnrkh)
2nd April 2019, 21:12
Yes I would think they definitely miss Ricciardos input.
Matn
3rd April 2019, 7:42
I do think RBR is missing a driver like Ricciardo at this moment…but time will pass… Ricciardo was already passed by Verstappen on all area’s, Ricciardo didn’t deny it and labeled Verstappen as ‘just being awefull fast’ , ‘Verstappen is a racing nerd’ and finally ‘we need more time to find a right set-up’. Both driver pushed each other, wich isn’t the case with Gasly at the moment…
In terms of set-up the aero is the biggest issue at the moment…they need some good updates to get it right…
Though RBR aren’t unique, Vettel and also the Mercedes drivers are not 100% comfortable in their new cars… they have more powerfull engines to compensate…
stefan
3rd April 2019, 17:10
Yeah looking at the job DR is doing at Renault , that must be the case :-).
But seriously I think they miss someone like DR, not because VER doesn’t know his stuff but more that GAS is very junior so you only have one person giving valuable input instead of one
JohnH (@johnrkh)
4th April 2019, 6:17
Matn that would be because Ricciardo is not into mud slinging like RB.
Johnny H.
2nd April 2019, 21:44
It was more that Dan copied Max’s setup when he couldn’t get it together than the other way around.