Christian Horner reveals cause of Red Bull pitstop horrors

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has explained what caused the multiple pitstop issues for the team during the Bahrain Grand Prix. 

Firstly, Max Verstappen entered the pits on lap 11 but suffered a slow stop after the red light on the Red Bull pit gantry failed to change once the pit stop was complete, despite there being no traffic in the pit lane. He ended up rejoining the race in 17th on hard tyres.

Secondly, Verstappen’s team-mate Yuki Tsunoda experienced similar issues during his first pit stop. The Japanese driver fumed over the radio, “Yellow was flashing, man. Oh my god!”

Discussing the issues with Motorsport.com and other media following the race, Horner explained:

“We’ve been struggling with two issues this weekend, a braking issue, and, you know, secondly, just an imbalance, and when you have that then everything looks worse.

“On top of that, we’ve had a horrible day where we had what looks like a wiring loom issue in the pit gantry that caused there to be a problem with the traffic light.

“So, yes, all in all, to actually come away with a 6th place and limit it to an 8-point deficit to Lando with the challenges that we’ve had, you know, we need to leave here, obviously focus on what we can sort out for Jeddah in 5 days’ time.”

He added:

“I think we need to look into it.

“I’ve just heard that there was some kind of wiring or electrical issue with the gantry. One I certainly haven’t seen before, where I mean the drivers live by those traffic lights, and the actual stops were pretty good, one of them was a two-second stop.

“But then the driver’s waiting for the lights and obviously it didn’t go out so everything’s gone into quarantine and we’ll have a good look at it.”

When asked what the team changed for the next round of pitstops to avoid similar issues, Horner explained:

“Well, Max came in the first stop, and the light in the thing… and it’s a very simple system that we expected that maybe the button hadn’t been pressed hard enough by one of the technicians, and the next pit stop was within one minute. And then it happened again, and at that point, we went into a manual override on the system, and the chief mechanic released the car.”