Verstappen: A positive result considering all the things that went wrong

Verstappen was seventh in qualifying for the race, and the writing was on the wall given how much he struggled with his Red Bull RB21.

He did not have the best of starts, and from there on he struggled to make progress, as Hard tyres did not do the trick, while two botched pit stops meant sixth place was the maximum he could achieve after a pass on Alpine's Pierre Gasly on the final lap.

However, Verstappen tried to take positives from his Bahrain Grand Prix; he said: "P6 was at least a positive result considering all the things that went wrong today.

"The start was not good, we struggled with tyre management all race, and I had no grip or pace on the hard tyres. During our pit-stops there was a problem with the lights which cost us a lot of time in the pits and put us back in to traffic.

"Unfortunately our second pitstop was worse than the first and at one point I was in last place," he pointed out. "I enjoyed the fight at the end with Pierre and the overtake on the last lap, I tried to maximise our points until the very end.

"To finish P6 at the end was the best that we could do, this was not the weekend that we wanted but we have to keep on trying to improve.

"We are working on finding solutions and solving the issues we have at the moment to hopefully be more competitive in Jeddah," Verstappen concluded.

Yuki Tsunoda, in the sister car, was ninth at the chequered flag, having started tenth after an eventful race. At least he managed to score points in his second race with Red Bull.

"Today is another learning curve," Tsunoda said. "I feel like I could have done better, there are still a lot of things we could have done better together and the pit-stop issues lost us position.

"The pace was good, but I am not fully happy because I still think we could have made up a couple of more positions. It's only my second race and things come up that you haven't experienced before, so it's good a lot of new things are happening in this early phase, so I can maximise things in the future.

"Overall, it's my first points with the Team, so it has to be a positive day," the Japanese driver added. "I feel like we took a step forward from Suzuka, so I appreciate how the Team have supported me and how we have been able to progress in a good way so quickly.

"I am not setting a specific goal for Jeddah yet, it's just about keeping doing what I am doing, I hope to do slightly better in Qualifying and that should make my life easier," Tsunoda concluded.

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner was frustrated with his team's Bahrain Grand Prix; he summed up: "Nothing went our way from the start of the race.

"We've been struggling with two issues this weekend, one a braking issue, and secondly an imbalance issue," he revealed. "When you have these issues tyre degradation is also highlighted more.

"On top of that we've had just a horrible day where we had an issue in the pit gantry that caused a problem with the traffic light. The actual pit-stops were actually quite good, but the electric issues definitely impacted our race.

"For Max to come away with a P6 and to limit the deficit to Lando this weekend despite the challenges we've had is the best we could have hoped for.

"Yuki has had a very solid weekend. Qualifying in the top 10, finishing in the points today, he drove pretty well here in Bahrain.

"The Team are very much focused on developing the car and hopefully over the next few races there are some updates that are introduced that address the issues raised," Horner said. "This race has exposed some pitfalls that we very clearly have that we need to get on top of quickly, we understand where the issues are but introducing the solutions takes a bit longer.

"We have a strong technical team that has produced some of the best race cars in the world in the past few seasons so I am confident that we can turn things around.

"As a Team we are focused on analysing and sorting what is possible when we go again in Jeddah in five days' time," the Briton concluded.

Verstappen leaves Bahrain eight points behind Lando Norris in the 2025 Formula 1 drivers' championship.