Fighting for sixth place is not often where you find Max Verstappen in the closing laps of a Formula 1 race.
But that is exactly where the Red Bull driver found himself as the laps ticked down in the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday. After a difficult qualifying session ended with Verstappen starting the race down in P7, everything went wrong for him from the moment the lights went out to start the Bahrain Grand Prix.
“Basically everything went wrong!” Verstappen declared after the race when speaking with the official F1 channel. “We had a poor start, too much wheelspin when I dropped the clutch, and then the first stint again [I had] basically the same problems that I had in Qualifying, plus we were just overheating our tires too much compared to the competition ahead of us.”
After starting the race on a set of soft tires, Red Bull called Verstappen in for a pit stop on Lap 10 to make the switch to a set of hards. But things only got worse for him from there, starting with a complication along pit lane, followed by the hard tires simply not working for him on the track.
“Then [at] the first stop I think the lights got stuck on, but of course I don’t want to drive through the lights – you want to stay and stick to the protocol of the team – so that put me into traffic as well, then the hard tires unfortunately didn’t work so I was sliding around even more than I was on the soft,” added Verstappen.
“Then we boxed again, [which was an] even worse pit stop, so then I was last. And, yeah, considering everything, to be honest to finish P6 is then alright. I mean, more than that was anyway not possible even with good pit stops or other tires selected, realistically.
“It’s of course not what we want, but it’s just where we are at with our car and the tire behavior that we have with the car. Everything is just highlighted even more on a track like this.”
Verstappen was able to recover and ultimately pass Pierre Gasly for sixth place on the final lap of the race, but again fighting for sixth at the end of a race is unfamiliar territory for the Red Bull driver.
As is his current place in the Drivers’ Championship, where he sits third, looking up at both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, whose win in Bahrain moved him up to second in the standings.
“You have to hang on, try to improve the situation, but it was just a bit stuck at the moment and hopefully we can improve soon,” concluded Verstappen.
We’ll see if that improvement starts next weekend in Saudi Arabia.
