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Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen recovered from the back of the grid to finish sixth at the Australian Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen claimed the fastest lap on his way to collecting eight points on a tricky weekend for Red Bull.
The Dutchman saw his qualifying session on Saturday come to an end before he’d passed the first chicane, spinning across the gravel and into the barriers on his maiden flying lap.
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Verstappen appeared to be caught out by an engine issue that locked the rear brakes and gave him no chance of making the corner, let alone avoiding an accident.
His new teammate, Isack Hadjar, showed what the Red Bull was capable of, securing P3 on the grid before his Australian Grand Prix came to an end in the early stages of Sunday’s race.
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Martin Brundle and Jenson Button were speaking about Verstappen’s accident in the build-up to the race on Sky Sports F1 (8/3 2:42 am).
Button said: “It looked like he’s hit the pedal hard as you do at turn one, and he’s not had any chance to catch a massive snap.
“It’s like it’s just locked the rears solid and thrown him into the gravel. In that moment, the driver can’t do anything.”
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Brundle replied: “Speaking to Red Bull this morning, saying, can you tell us so we can explain to the audience what happened.
“They went, ‘We’re not really sure yet,’ which is quite worrying. I think it was a combination of the brake-by-wire, it was like pulling the handbrake on, downshifting, aerodynamics, a number of things.
“But, they haven’t gone, this is the problem, we’ll fix that. But Max will start from the grid, he will not start from the pit lane because I think he knows that with the variabilities with the starts, it’s not out of the question that he could be P12 by the end of the first lap.”
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How Red Bull’s Australian Grand Prix played out as Max Verstappen makes up 14 positions
There would have been mixed emotions in the Red Bull garage after Sunday’s race.
Verstappen made up 14 positions to finish sixth, but there were high hopes for Hadjar to score his second Formula 1 podium.
Unfortunately, the young Frenchman slipped back on the opening lap and found himself battling Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar.
His engine finally gave up on lap 10, ending his hopes of becoming the first Red Bull driver to finish ahead of Verstappen since Sergio Perez at the 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Red Bull secretly hoped that Verstappen would extend his contract before getting up to speed in F1’s new cars and fully understanding whether he would enjoy this new style of racing.
Although Verstappen drove to the best of his ability to reach P6, he wasn’t particularly impressed with the style of racing and recognises that he’s a long way off the two Mercedes drivers.
Speaking to Sky Sports about the race, Verstappen said: “No, not really [I didn’t enjoy it]. The overtakes were fun, but I’m also racing cars that are two seconds slower.
“For me, it’s just clearing the traffic, it sounds maybe weird, but it’s just how I see it, it’s not really a fair fight.
“I just try to go through as clean as possible and try, and get into my rhythm at one point when I cleared the midfield.
“We had too much degradation, and we were just really graining a lot on the tyres and that then compromised a lot on the rest of the race.
“We talked about the hard compounds being better today for us, but that compound somehow didn’t work today.”
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