2019 Aston Martin Red Bull Racing - Honda F1 Team

[Marti_EF3]

Red Bull duo Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly say Red Bull is struggling to get the most out of Pirelli's soft tyre in Bahrain.

With the Milton Keynes-based outfit ending up behind Renault as the nearest challenger to Ferrari and Mercedes in second practice, it knows it needs to make a step forward.

But while encouraged by how their car performed on the medium compound, Red Bull's drivers say that work is needed overnight to understand why the RB15 is not delivering on the soft.

Verstappen said about his day, as he ended up sixth in FP2: "It has been okay but there is still quite a bit of work to do. I am still not happy with how the car is behaving. We will look into the data tonight to see what we can improve.

"On the medium tyre, we were really competitive. We should have been fast, but out of the last corner I had a little issue so I lost a few tenths there.

"But then on the softest tyre, I didn't feel the grip like I should have. We need to look into that."

Gasly, who ended up 12th in the second session, added: "FP1 was good. FP2 was good as well, but with the soft tyres we tried something and it didn't really work.

"We are still lacking a bit of pace with the soft tyres, but we will work tonight to find out for tomorrow."

Having beaten Ferrari in Australia, both drivers said it was not really a huge surprise to see the Maranello-based outfit strike back already.


Verstappen said: "I don't know what went wrong in Melbourne but now they are very competitive again. So that is what we expected already in Melbourne."

Gasly added: "We knew they would be fast, especially on this track. They have been fast every year and I think Australia was weird. But they clearly look very strong this weekend."

[Hino]

Sounds like a mapping issue with VER with power delivery.

Verstappen described the power drops which affected at least two of his laps. “I had some issues in general in the fastest lap with the power, not having full power,” he said.

https://www.racefans.net/2019/03/29/ver ... best-laps/

[Marti_EF3]

Sounds like a mapping issue with VER with power delivery.

Verstappen described the power drops which affected at least two of his laps. “I had some issues in general in the fastest lap with the power, not having full power,” he said.

https://www.racefans.net/2019/03/29/ver ... best-laps/

It seems they solved it, because the long runs later on the session were great.

[McMika98]

Sounds like a mapping issue with VER with power delivery.

Verstappen described the power drops which affected at least two of his laps. “I had some issues in general in the fastest lap with the power, not having full power,” he said.

https://www.racefans.net/2019/03/29/ver ... best-laps/

It seems they solved it, because the long runs later on the session were great.

Sorry but the long runs were horredous esp Gasly. They are barely above midfield pace. Nothing to write home about.

[ispano6]

Sounds like a mapping issue with VER with power delivery.



https://www.racefans.net/2019/03/29/ver ... best-laps/

It seems they solved it, because the long runs later on the session were great.

Sorry but the long runs were horredous esp Gasly. They are barely above midfield pace. Nothing to write home about.

Max's was better than Hulks reno so its forgiven.

[McMika98]

Toro rossos were almost as good. Max was decent. Ferrari seemed ok as well. These tyres are bit of a lottery especially with the changing conditions and temp dropping. Hard to predict.

[j.yank]

Here are the average lap times in the long runs with soft and medium tyres. Ferrari are with combined stints from Leclerc and Vettel because of the Vettel accident with the soft tyires and the very short run of Leclerc with medium.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16liUl ... p3bADOBxmN

[Singabule]

Max engine mode turned down by the mechanics, as it only shown after last three quarter of straight. If you compare to what STR can do on straight, quite unbelivable. I think they want to normalize the result as merc did.

[JordanMugen]

These tyres are bit of a lottery

Or....

The teams (many of them) are doing a substandard job including RBR?

[McMika98]

These tyres are bit of a lottery

Or....

The teams (many of them) are doing a substandard job including RBR?

Possibly the team needs to get the soft to work but Bahrain has a funny track evolution in that it does not always become quicker with time as the temp drop rapidly. Regarding time, as the cars are much faster than 2018, we should be looking at low 27s for pole.

[Marti_EF3]

FP2 Long runs

[Just_a_fan]

It's pretty close by the look of that. Max slightly faster on the mediums, Merc / Ferrari and Max very close on the soft. The Torro Rosso looking interesting on the medium too.

[gandharva]

Looks like they massively underestimated the F1.5 teams while going for a one stop setup in the race. Verstappen was barely able to pull off P5. I think they expected the same from Gasly, but he is just not on that level to pull this off. Harsh learning curve for Gasly, and imho time is already ticking for him as Marco expected him to perform good in Q right from the beginning.

[Marti_EF3]

Seems they didn't solve the setup issues with the soft tires. Its discouraging to see them on the midfield side, and barely ahead of a Mclaren and a Haas. I know that their race pace is much better and on par with the top teams. But that gap in quali is unacceptable, they need to solve this as soon as possible, because China will be worst than here...

[PhillipM]

I don't think the race pace is good enough to make any difference to be honest, it looks barely faster than haas and mclaren - both of which have enough straightline pace to come past with DRS fairly easily.