Max Verstappen: Bahrain Grand Prix is Red Bull's low point

Max Verstappen

Verstappen: Bahrain is Red Bull's low point

He couldn't get close to Ferrari or Mercedes.

Matthew Scott

Thursday 4 April 2019 14:36 Updated: 14:46

Max Verstappen says the run to fourth at the Bahrain Grand Prix is as bad as Red Bull will perform in 2019. The Dutchman almost took a podium finish when Charles Leclerc's Ferrari lost power, however a top-three spot might have been more than generous.

Verstappen qualified fifth in Sakhir, albeit almost a second adrift of Charles Leclerc's pole time.

Unable to challenge the front-runners in the same way which saw him overtake Sebastian Vettel for third place in Melbourne, Verstappen gained a place as a result of the German's spin in battle with Lewis Hamilton, but is confident he will be closer to the fight for honours, having tested the RB15 in Bahrain this week.

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"It cannot be worse than what we showed here," he said after putting in 69 laps and topping the timesheets on Tuesday.

"Also, we made some mistakes I think in terms of set-up. I think if you look back to Australia, we were actually quite happy.

"Of course it was still 20 seconds to Valtteri [Bottas, race winner], but in that race I couldn't go and push like I wanted to because basically I was always held up by a car.

"I think we can do a lot better than what we showed so far."

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Dr Helmut Marko and Christian Horner have both suggested that Red Bull's lack of pace is more to do with aerodynamic failings than the Honda power unit and Verstappen is confident a fix will be found.

"You always want more downforce," said Verstappen. "It's also about how you can balance it and clearly we did something wrong during the weekend.

"We did a good amount of laps to understand what went wrong on the weekend.

"I think we learned a lot from it already, so in that way I think it's very positive.

"We don't have that many days anyway to understand the car, during the weekend it all goes that quick.

"Just always doing one and a half hour sessions [in practice] is not amazing. Doing a day like this is very helpful."