Max Verstappen tried to attack Charles Leclerc at the start of the first race of the 2022 season after missing pole position by just over a tenth, but failed to take the lead due to the Monegasque’s strong defense.
After seeing that he could not catch up with the Ferrari, from the Red Bull pit wall they opted to enter the pits earlier to get past the leader, and on lap 14, the reigning world champion entered the pitlane.
The Austrian team’s mechanics tried to act quickly and precisely to allow Verstappen to trim the nearly four seconds off Leclerc on the re-entry lap, but Ferrari responded a single lap later.
With the Dutchman heading into the Sakhir finish straight at full speed and the Ferrari man coming out of the box, we saw a tight battle under braking at turn 1, as well as a nice and spectacular duel in the following laps, although everything paid off with those in red retaining the head of the race.
Verstappen tried another undercut again when he was a little closer to Leclerc, but he could not close the advantage that deprived him of the lead in Bahrain, and that caused him to send a message on the radio to his team.
“There are two times in which I have taken the start calmly and I have not been in the front,” said the champion of last year. “I will never, ever do that.”
The adviser, and one of Red Bull’s most authoritative voices, Helmut Marko , spoke to Motorsport.com after the test, explaining what caused Verstappen to miss out on his chance to win, ignoring the fault that led to his retirement.
“Max [Verstappen] was told to hold back during his approach laps. If he had been driving at a normal pace, he would have been ahead of Leclerc, and when you’re there, it’s a completely different story,” said the Austrian.
“Our tire degradation was much higher than Ferrari’s, as was their engine power, but still, if Max had been ahead of Leclerc, it would have been different,” the adviser continued.
Asked if the slow laps were Red Bull’s or Verstappen’s mistake, he said: “It was all because of the strategy we did, it was our mistake, not Max’s.”
The Dutchman was eventually forced out of the race with three laps to go to the checkered flag with a fuel pump problem, making for a rather disappointing start to his world title defence.
Red Bull chief executive Christian Horner stated that “it’s always a balance” to judge what to push at the start of a stint, but thought Ferrari would have had the pace to win anyway.
“The problem is that we underestimated the undercut, but Ferrari had speed, and if we had overtaken, they would have passed us, we had no pace today,” he said.
His driver, who fought with Leclerc at times, had to see how Sainz overtook him due to the lack of power, although he previously expressed his complaints about the strategy on the radio, indicating that the direction of the car was like a “robot”.
“I don’t hold back, I say what I think about the car, and I wasn’t happy with what we were doing, or with the strategy,” Verstappen said. “It was not addressed to the engineer, I have a very good relationship with him.”
“He is the only one I can talk to, and we have to analyze a lot of things,” said the Red Bull man.
