‘Everything went wrong’ – Max Verstappen rues problems after P6 in Bahrain as he reflects on ‘tough’ situation for Red Bull

“Basically everything went wrong!” the Dutch driver conceded afterwards. “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 tyres too much compared to the competition ahead of us.

“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 tyres unfortunately didn’t work so I was sliding around even more than I was on the soft.

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“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 tyres selected, realistically.

“It’s of course not what we want, but it’s just where we are at with our car and the tyre behaviour that we have with the car. Everything is just highlighted even more on a track like this.”