Red Bull in difficulty arrives on the Red Sea for the Saudi Grand Prix of this weekend in desperate Djeddah from preventing their 2025 season from sinking into mediocrity. The Giants of Formula 1 Austrian left Bahrain on Sunday in a dark mood, their limitations were naked under the hard spots of the Sakhir desert. Here, AFP Sport assesses the problems that threaten to derail the quest for Max Verstappen for a fifth successive world title: Verstappen slipped in the third place in the pilot ranking, eight points behind the leader of McLaren, Lando Norris, after having followed in sixth, more than half a minute behind his teammate, Oscar Piastri. He explained all the tally tally bars of the team in the manufacturers’ championship where they are late 80 points behind the leaders McLaren after only four races.
While McLaren celebrated his third victory for four in Sakhir, Red Bull summoned a “crisis” meeting involving their best brass.
The director of the team Christian Horner, the influence influence Helmut Marko, the technical director Pierre Wache and the chief engineer Paul Monaghan met to think about the fate of the team.
Horner, in a media meeting after the race in Red Bull’s hotel tent, had offered an blunt assessment of their place.
“This race revealed traps which are obviously very clear that we have to get up very quickly.
“In the end, you can hide it a little thanks to the configuration and we were able to achieve this weekend in Suzuka last weekend. We understand where the problems are, it presents the solutions that obviously take a little more time,” he said.
Verstappen, which was the last one at some point in the Bahrain Grand Prix, deplored that “everything goes wrong”.
“This is of course not what we want, but this is where we are with our car and the behavior of the tires that we have with the car.
“Everything is just highlighted even more on a track like this,” added the Dutchman.
One man’s group
Red Bull would be even worse if this was not the case for the combative brightness of Verstappen in the cajole of a problematic car to fight with faster rivals like McLaren and Mercedes.
His victory in Japan in the first stage of the triple head of this month was probably his greatest qualification performance ever qualified.
The machine idiosyncraties have been too difficult to solve for the unfortunate Liam Lawson, who was deposited without ceremonies in their RB sister team after only two races.
The successor to the Kiwi, Yuki Tsunoda, finished points in Suzuka before adding two of the ninth place to Sakhir.
Without an effective “winger” to help him in the races, Verstappen is left to do everything by himself.
It certainly cannot be a coincidence that the discomfort of Red Bull occurs after some of their brightest brains have jumped the ship.
The team was shocked when the legendary Adrian NewEy design guru, at the heart of the development of cars that won seven drivers and six manufacturers’ championships, stopped joining Aston Martin.
Another enormous loss was the departure of sports director Jonathan Wheatley, who played his new role as director of the Sauber team this month.
The Red Bull race head of the race strategy will also have left for McLaren, where former chief designer Rob Marshall had moved in 2023.
Verstappen, which has been part of the Red Bull family since 2015, has a contract until 2028.
In an interview with AFP in Mexico last October, he said that it was “definitively” his intention to see his time in Red Bull, despite the tension surrounding Horner last season after being accused of inappropriate driving towards a colleague.
Horner was authorized for any reprehensible act before the opening of the 2024 season, but the off -piste scandal scolded for weeks.
However, on Monday, Marko dropped a bomb, telling Sky Germany that he “worried a lot” that Red Bull has increased their game, Verstappen can go up the sticks.
“The concern is great. Improvements must arrive in the near future so that he has a car with which he can win again,” warned Marko.
“We have to create a base with a car so that he can fight for the world championship.”
(This story has not been published by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a unionized flow.)
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