Troubled Red Bull search for path back to fast lane at Saudi F1 GP

Ailing Red Bull arrive on the Red Sea for this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah desperate to prevent their 2025 season sinking into mediocrity.

The Austrian Formula One giants left Bahrain on Sunday in sombre mood, their limitations laid bare under the harsh floodlights in the desert of Sakhir.

There are certain issues that threaten to derail Max Verstappen’s quest for a fifth successive world title.

The state of play Verstappen slipped to third in the drivers’ standings, eight points behind McLaren’s leader Lando Norris, after trailing in sixth, over half a minute behind Norris’s teammate Oscar Piastri, in Bahrain.

He has accounted for all bar two of the team’s tally in the constructors’ championship where they are lagging a massive 80 points behind runaway leaders McLaren after just four races.

As McLaren celebrated their third win from four in Sakhir, Red Bull convened a ‘crisis’ meeting involving their top brass.

Team principal Christian Horner, influential advisor Helmut Marko, technical director Pierre Wache, and chief engineer Paul Monaghan met to mull over the team’s plight.

Horner, in a post-race media encounter in Red Bull’s hospitality tent, had offered a blunt appraisal of where they were at.

“This race has exposed some pitfalls that are obviously very clear that we need to get on top of very quickly.

“Ultimately you can mask it a little through set-up and we were able to achieve that last weekend in Suzuka. We understand where the issues are, it’s introducing the solutions that obviously takes a little more time,” he said.

Verstappen, who was plum last at one stage at the Bahrain Grand Prix, lamented that “basically everything went wrong”.

“It’s of course not what we want, but it’s just where we are at with our car and the tyre behaviour that we have with the car.

“Everything is just highlighted even more on a track like this,” added the Dutchman.

Red Bull would be in even worse shape if it wasn’t for Verstappen’s combative brilliance in cajoling a problematic car to fight with quicker rivals like McLaren and Mercedes.

His win in Japan in the first leg of this month’s triple header was only down to arguably his greatest ever qualifying performance.

Agencies