26-year-old F1 driver suffered from ‘lazy understeer’ on first day of Bahrain testing

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Red Bull star Max Verstappen will be hoping to emulate his success from 2023 this year but appears to be battling with plenty of understeer during the first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain.

The RB19 was statistically the most dominant car in Formula 1 history, but Adrian Newey and his design and aero teams have made some big changes heading into 2024.

Covering testing at the Sakhir circuit for The Race, former designer Gary Anderson has been providing his analysis of the opening laps of testing.

Verstappen battling with understeer in testing

The 2024 season has the potential to see some of the closest racing Formula 1 fans have witnessed in years.

Despite Red Bull winning 22 out of 23 races, the difference between the entire grid during qualifying and the races was smaller than it ever has been.

However, Red Bull had a car that performed brilliantly in qualifying and then blew the rest of the field away in nearly every race.

The likes of Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston Martin and McLaren all challenged and different times, but only Carlos Sainz on the tricky street circuit in Singapore was able to defeat them.

Adrian Newey has made some big changes to the RB19 and will hope that the RB20 can open up an even bigger gap on the rest of the grid.

However, Max Verstappen – who was on duty for the entirety of day one of testing – was suffering from a fair amount of understeer in Bahrain.

The 26-year-old is more than capable of dealing with that, but he’ll want Red Bull to sort out the balance of the car as quickly as possible.

Red Bull working out early kinks with RB20

Reviewing Red Bull’s latest car, Anderson said: “The front end of the Red Bull doesn’t look like it’s doing quite what Verstappen wants it to do at Turn 11. A bit of lazy understeer, but not as much as the Alpine has!”

What may slightly worry Red Bull is that understeer wasn’t the only issue they were dealing with.

Writing on Auto Motor und Sport’s live blog, journalist Joel Lischka noticed that just two corners later, Verstappen was dealing with oversteer not understeer, suggesting that Red Bull still have some work to do during testing.

It’s so early in the day that Red Bull are unlikely to be worrying too much about this right now.

However, Verstappen will only get three sessions of running before the first free practice session next Thursday and given how brilliant the RB19 was to drive, he’ll want to have a similar feeling once the first race rolls around.

On another note, Alpine may be concerned that they’re experiencing even more understeer and will hope that can be resolved quickly.