Red Bull’s Bahrain Grand Prix highlighted the nightmare situation they may have been sucked into for the rest of the season, even if there was a silver lining at the end of it.
Both cars finished in the points for the first time in six races and Max Verstappen made a last-lap overtake to secure a greater haul.
Red Bull couldn’t have achieved much more at the Bahrain Grand Prix, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t face other issues all weekend.
Assessing the current situation, Verstappen’s hopes of a fifth consecutive drivers’ championship are fading fast.
Verstappen and Helmut Marko ‘don’t agree’ on Red Bull’s biggest issue and there appears to be no end to the drama in sight.
McLaren are dominating Red Bull and at least one of the 2025 titles appears to be a foregone conclusion, just four races in a 24-race Formula 1 campaign. Upgrades need to come soon.
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Helmut Marko upset with Red Bull’s ‘not acceptable’ pit stops at the Bahrain Grand Prix
Verstappen’s Red Bull get-out clause is bad news and could see him leave his current employer at the end of the year if things fail to improve by the summer break.
In effect, the Milton Keynes-based outfit are under pressure to deliver results from a commercial perspective, as well as a future one. They risk losing their superstar driver.
Team advisor Marko was most displeased by the slow pit stops in Bahrain – an issue which plagued both drivers’ races in the end.
“When Marko came out, I caught him and then we walked together to the end of the paddock. He said: ‘It is very alarming in several aspects’. He indicated [that] yes, the car is not fast enough but also those pit stops that will go wrong, he literally used the words ‘That is not acceptable.’,” said Ronald Vording.
“He said he admitted it openly ‘Yes, we are now just the fourth team, something has to happen very quickly.’ But that is also difficult because yes they need updates but of course, they have to work [too]. They should not be rushed.”
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Max Verstappen’s most worrying Red Bull statistic at the Bahrain Grand Prix
It has been a while since Red Bull last had a dominant car. The early stages of the RB20 in 2024 were quite strong.
It allowed Verstappen to win the Bahrain Grand Prix by 22 seconds from teammate Sergio Perez, to secure yet another one-two finish at the time.
That margin swung around by one whole minute in the space of one year, with Verstappen finishing 34 seconds behind Oscar Piastri on Sunday.
With just over 20 races between the 2024 and 2025 events, it means that Red Bull have lost roughly three seconds of race time on average at every weekend since last year’s Grand Prix.
With most races being somewhere between 50 and 70 laps, it means that they have lost nearly half a tenth per lap, every lap for a year to the fastest car.
When compared to McLaren it gets even worse. They’ve lost 90 seconds of race time in a year to them – which is somewhere around three-quarters of a tenth per lap.
