Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen has revealed that a set-up blunder was to blame for his relative under-performance in Bahrain.
Verstappen brought his RB15 home in fourth position at Sakhir, but rued his car’s lousy balance as well as cross winds that induced constant oversteer.
However, the in-season test that followed the Bahrain round helped the Milton Keynes-based outfit uncover a mechanical set-up mistake that played a significant part in Verstappen’s disappointing performance.
“We understood already a lot in testing, and we also found out we made a mistake with the set-up, the whole week, unfortunately,” he said.
“That’s how it goes. As long as we found it.
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“I think if we could find a good balance within the car I think we could definitely be fighting closer, yeah. Then for sure, we would have finished third in Bahrain.
“It was anyhow windy throughout the whole weekend. I was never happy with the balance, always trying to get it, but we never got it.
“With what we found we could understand why we couldn’t find a good balance.”
While the set-up mistake hindered Red Bull’s 2019 contender, Verstappen it wasn’t the only factor responsible for the RB15’s poor behavior on Pirelli’s softer tyres in Bahrain.
‘That is another thing, but in general it would not help, especially if you have the softer tyres and you are sliding that much, you are overheating them.
‘It wouldn’t have helped. I wouldn’t say it would have cleaned it up fully.
“It’s always a question mark. Then in the race on both tyres we were too slow, so I don’t think it was a big issue at the end.”
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Verstappen is hopeful the issue has been ironed out for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.
“It’s a simple fix,” he said. “What we did wrong there, yeah, but then we need to see how the rest is behaving.
“It’s again a new Grand Prix, so a lot of things can happen. We just have to make sure that we are on top of what we can control. Then we’ll see how competitive can be.”
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