Max Verstappen and Helmut Marko are very much aligned with their verdict on Red Bull after Bahrain GP Friday practice.

And that verdict is that Red Bull are “too slow”, after Verstappen ended the opening day of track action eighth-tenths off the blistering pace of McLaren.

Verstappen and Marko on same page: Red Bull ‘too slow’ in Bahrain?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

After converting a shock pole into a first F1 2025 win last weekend in Japan, Verstappen and Red Bull carried a great deal of momentum into Bahrain, though McLaren were quick to make a statement with Oscar Piastri heading a dominant one-two for the team in FP2, a tenth-and-a-half up on McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.

The nearest challenger to McLaren was Mercedes’ George Russell, half a second off Piastri’s pace, while Verstappen was eight tenths adrift and Yuki Tsunoda seven tenths further back.

“We are too slow,” was the blunt assessment from Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko when he spoke to the media, including PlanetF1.com, after FP2, but it was a verdict which Verstappen fully shares.

“No grip. Yeah, just difficult,” he began in reflection of his day, Verstappen having returned to the Red Bull cockpit for FP2 after Ayumu Iwasa took his place for a rookie FP1 outing.

“Of course, took like, one lap, two laps, to get into it. But, I mean, still, the gap was quite massive.

“So yeah, not entirely happy, just struggling a lot with grip, feeling. In general, the balance wasn’t too bad, but just, yeah, off.

“And quite a bit of work to do also in the long run.

“We’re just too slow, basically, every lap. And it was not, honestly, not a lot of fun out there in the long run. So a bit of drift practice there at the end as well.”

After an FP2 session which focused on running the soft Pirelli tyre for Verstappen, he was asked to explain that approach.

“Yeah, it’s just how we planned the run,” he said. “From FP1, with Ayumu in the car, and then me in FP2, just to see how they would hold up.”

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While the final gap to McLaren on Friday was daunting, Norris was very clear after the session in stating that the timesheets mean nothing, and that McLaren are not actually the class of the field in Bahrain.

“I just don’t think they turned up,” he said of the competition.

“Everyone just looks at the timesheets. They have no idea about the information on who turns up, who doesn’t.

“It’s like three-and-a-half, four tenths around here. So that puts us immediately back in the same position as the Mercedes, so at the minute I wouldn’t say we’re any quicker.”

But as for Red Bull’s true deficit to McLaren, Verstappen is not too optimistic.

“It’s big, yeah,” he said of Red Bull’s gap to McLaren.

“We did a bit of a different approach to our Friday, so I think this gap is very big.”

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