Max Verstappen could only muster a distant seventh in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix, only a week after putting Red Bull's 2025 Formula 1 car on pole position in Japan. So what changed?
The reigning F1 world champion has a simple answer to that. There was nothing fundamentally different about the car, he said, the drop-off in performance instead reflects the different environment with high temperatures, abrasive track surface and configuration in Bahrain making life more difficult for both Red Bull drivers by amplifying the weaknesses Verstappen mitigated spectacularly in Japan. The deficit of almost six tenths of a second to pole position is testament to that.
"In Japan it wasn't good as well," said Verstappen when asked why the car seemed so different compared with how it was at Suzuka. "But here you just get punished a bit harder when you have big balance issues because the Tarmac is so aggressive.
"The wind is also quite high and the track has quite low grip, so everything is highlighted more."
During Friday practice, Red Bull suffered particularly badly with rear tyre overheating and degradation. As Verstappen pointed out, Sakhir is an abrasive track surface, which combined with high track temperatures and the heavily traction-dependent circuit configuration places a premium on protecting the rear axle. Having struggled with that on Friday, not only on long runs but also on a single lap while conducting set-up experiments across the two cars, Red Bull rightly settled on a set-up that would protect the rear tyres more.
That meant understeer, the logical compromise given this is a race where race pace and tyre management is more important than track position – effectively the inverse of what we saw at Suzuka where Verstappen parked himself in front of the quicker McLarens throughout the race thanks to his outstanding qualifying performance.
The downside of the changes that had to be made in Bahrain was that the car didn't have the front-end responsiveness for Verstappen to work his magic, which exacerbated the braking struggles Red Bull has battled all weekend.
"[It's] just the whole weekend struggling a bit with brake feeling and stopping power, and besides that also very poor grip," said Verstappen. "We tried a lot on the set-up and basically all of it didn't work, didn't give us a clear direction to work in. Just overall a difficult weekend so far."
In qualifying, Verstappen leaked time to polesitter Oscar Piastri's McLaren from Turn 4 onwards. It was a similar, but less extreme, story compared to the lead Ferrari and Mercedes drivers, although with a particularly big loss at the final corner despite the best efforts to mitigate the rear tyre overheating problem. Verstappen also battled braking problems there, at one stage going off at Turn 14.
Team-mate Yuki Tsunoda scraped into Q3, beating Alpine's Jack Doohan to 10th place in Q2 by just 0.017s. Despite putting up a better qualifying result than he did at Suzuka, Tsunoda struggled more with the car in Bahrain and ended up almost nine-tenths off Verstappen and 10th in Q3.
That was a satisfactory result considering his practice struggles in a car that he feels confident behind the wheel of but that continues to puzzle him in terms of the narrow performance window that is "just like a cliff" when you go over the limit.
"I'll take it, Q3 was my target," said Tsunoda. "Considering what I had in free practice, this is a good recovery.
"It's just really difficult to be in the narrow window where this car operates. Just trying things, naturally you have up and down performance, so I'm not really stressing much, but it's always tight. And if you go above [the limit] a little bit, it's just like a cliff, it just doesn't work at all.
"So I'm happy with the progress so far. I just keep [doing] what I'm doing. I'm happy with the confidence level in this car, but the knowledge and understanding is not yet [there]."
Tsunoda elaborated on this feeling, describing himself as running close to Verstappen in terms of set-up but admitting that it takes him longer to get to the capricious limit of the car. On top of that, he's still refining his understanding of how to optimise the tyre preparation.
"Set-up wise, we are close naturally," said Tsunoda. "In terms of confidence level in the car, I just need a bit more time to build up throughout the week. So that creates a bigger downside [in terms of the need] to try different sorts of stuff.
"But how we drive is not so far away [from each other]. So the balance normally, what I ask is actually kind of similar, but just in the warm up, and to be in the performance, and to operate the car in a good window, there's a lot of stuff other than set-up. So that's what I'm struggling at so far.
"I'm probably not understanding this car, even half [of] the thing. So [I'll] just keep what I'm doing, just increase this kind of rhythm for the understanding and progress in future."
The Red Bull should be stronger in the race, and while nobody expects it – or any other team – to trouble McLaren on Sunday, Verstappen is hopeful he could be a threat to the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers – and he also has Pierre Gasly's rapid Alpine starting three places ahead to deal with. That makes the race a case of damage limitation, salvaging what points he can in the knowledge that his world championship rivals will likely make gains.
"I'll try to do the best I can," said Verstappen. "I hope that I can stay with the Mercedes and the Ferraris. Naturally, I think the McLarens will pull away, but we'll try our best and see what happens."
