“Red Bull cannot fight for victory in Melbourne”

Max Verstappen put Red Bull out of mind for victory in front of the Australian Grand Prix of the season opening of Formula 1.

Although the reigning champion Verstappen won four world titles in a row and won 0.270s in Melbourne with 0.270s, Red Bull directed the Hack order during the entire 2024 campaign, when McLaren stormed forward, while Ferrari and Mercedes also became challengers.

Bahrain’s tests before the season indicated a similar hierarchy in 2025 when McLaren impressed his long -term pace.

However, Red Bull looked less competitive and was disabled by a number of problems. The team did not carry out any racing simulations after Liam Lawson came across a water pressure loss, while the behavior of the RB21 continues to worry.

Verstappen did not show much optimism when the test ended, and the Red Bull driver opened the Dutch media -including Motorsport.com -on Friday at a Via -Play event and expressed the extent of his concern.

“I don’t think we can fight for the victory in Melbourne,” said the Red Bull driver, although he admitted that “everything (on the RB21) in Melbourne can be set up a little better than in Bahrain”.

When asked how many teams could fight for world championship titles in 2025, Verstappen McLaren was shown: “At the moment only one thing, and this team is orange! This is of course a very nice color, but we still have to do work on our side. Other teams also want to see some improvements, I think, so a team is clearly in front of them at the moment.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

“If you look at the lap times, I think McLaren is the favorite. Not everything went smoothly on our side, but on the other hand, we have some ideas on how to improve. “

At the end of the Bahrain run, the technical director Pierre Wache painted a dilapidated picture and described the event “not as smoothly as we expected it” and admitted not to be as happy as possible because the car sometimes did not answer how we sometimes wanted it “.

The predecessor of the RB21 was known to be difficult to handle. Red Bull has been trying to solve this special problem for almost a year, and it seems that the squad has not completely ironed out the problem.

As reported during the testThe RB21 suffered from understeering in slow corners and overring them in high-speed curves on the Sakhir route.

“In terms of balance, it feels a bit more connected when entering the corners and also in the middle of the corners,” analyzed Verstappen. “On the other hand, there are still problems with the curbs and the bumps.

“These things are obviously not our strongest points, and I keep mentioning. It doesn’t always have to be said to the outside world, but we obviously talk a lot about it during the meeting. “

At least as Verstappen put it during the test, the new car can “not be worse than last year” even if it does not correspond to the highs of the pre-season of the RB20.