Debacle for Red Bull at F1 season opener – Verstappen and Perez retire shortly before the end – Balance problems, steering sluggish, fuel supply defective
“We see the problem Max, it’s nothing to do with the battery.” – “What can I do?” – “There’s not much we can do.” Minutes of a disaster for Red Bull at the season opener in Bahrain, seconds later Formula One world champion Max Verstappen rolls out. Double retirement, zero lap, 30 safe points gone.
And a lot of guesswork by Christian Horner and Co. The only thing that is certain is that there was no fuel left in the engine, but there was still some in the tank in both cases. Both Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who spun on the last lap due to the lack of propulsion, had their engines running dry.
“We don’t have a conclusive explanation. We have to investigate that first,” Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko tells ‘ORF’. He added to ‘Sky’: “This is something that has never happened before. We did tests where we ran the tanks down to one litre. Something must have broken. “
Why was there no petrol in the engine?
Team boss Christian Horner speaks of a “brutal end to the race for us.” He confirms that both Red Bull cars had the same problem and that the issue was unprecedented. Pierre Gasly’s retirement in the AlphaTauri, on the other hand, was due to a problem with the MGU-K, the kinetic energy recovery system.
Nevertheless, there is now plenty of analysis work to be done – and time is pressing. In just seven days, the next race will take place in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. What if the problem occurs there again?
“We don’t know exactly what it was yet,” Horner said. “Whether it was the ‘lift pump’ or the collector or something in the fuel lines, we can’t say. But we need to get to the bottom of it and understand it. We’ll take the cars apart, we’ll look at it and we’ll find the fault. “
Formula 1 tanks are not drained by a single pump, as is the case with a road car. To ensure an optimal fuel supply at all times, even when the tank is empty, the fuel is first pumped out of the tank via so-called “lift pumps”. These are low-pressure pumps that are a single unit.
The fuel is then collected in the so-called collector, which looks like an upside-down mineral water bottle. Only there sits the actual petrol pump that supplies the engine with E10. What exactly went wrong here needs to be investigated.
Red Bull took an extra hour the night before the race to work on the fuel supply on both cars. This included removing the “lift pumps”. But all the teams did that. Horner confirms: “That was more a general problem and not specific to Red Bull. It was just an inspection, we wanted to make sure. “
More problems for Verstappen in the race
For Verstappen, of course, this is the worst conceivable start to his title defence mission. “It’s just disappointing. Whether you finish first or second in the first race, it doesn’t matter. But we have to score points.” And the goal was clearly missed.
“We had a whole series of problems,” the reigning world champion continued. “First of all from the balance. I didn’t have any grip, like on Friday.” He had no grip on the front axle as well as no traction when accelerating, he lays out.
“Then I had a problem with the steering. There was no feeling in it anymore, way too heavy.” Verstappen now had to drive in a similar way to Nigel Mansell once did, who preferred heavy steering to have a better feel for the front tyres. Verstappen, however, had less feeling instead.
“It was almost impossible to steer and the faster I went, the more deceleration there was,” he explains. “When I steered to the right, it felt good at first, until something happened. That’s why my restart was so bad: I wanted to get on the gas but I couldn’t open the steering because it was stuck somehow.”
“At that point I was already thinking, ‘Okay, still getting second place today with so many problems is still good.’ But then the next problem came, that the engine didn’t get fuel anymore. Then everything went out, that was it. “
Verstappen initially suspected a problem with the battery. “What the hell is that?” he asks at first. The team assures him that the battery is okay. “No, it’s not!” counters Verstappen. When the team notices the problem, nothing can be done. Perez had the same symptoms a little later, which led to his retirement on the last lap.
Back to the problem with the steering. Here, too, Red Bull has already pinpointed the culprit: the last pit stop. “When the car was drained, the tie rod was bent. That’s why the problem was also different in left and right-hand corners. It looked like he had it under control.
So Red Bull has a lot to analyse in a very short time. Verstappen cautions: “Of course, you can always stand up and say that problems can happen. But at this level, when you already have so much information about the engines and everything, something like this shouldn’t happen. “
