Red Bull moved to explain why the driver’s pit stop was delayed during the F1 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda remained frustrated after losing precious seconds at the pit stop due to an unusual problem with the Red Bull signal system.
During Verstappen and Tsunoda’s first pit stop, the Red Bull Pit Gantry light was unable to turn green after the car was serviced, despite the clearing of the pit lane.
Verstappen last re-joined on the 17th after an additional period. The horned spurred the exit from the pitbox for a few seconds.
Four-time world champion Verstappen made a slow second stop due to a sticky front wheel on the way to a disappointing sixth place, lamenting “everything went wrong.”
“The Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner said: “Max came to the first stop, but the light didn’t do anything. Of course it was a very simple system and I thought (it might be) that the buttons might not have been pushed hard enough by one of the technicians.
“The next pit stop was within a minute and then it happened again. At that point, we manually overridden the system and the chief mechanic released the car.”
Horner said Red Bull will try to improve the issue ahead of Saudi Arabia’s Grand Prix this weekend.
“I just heard there’s a kind of wiring and electrical problem in the gantry,” he added.
“What I’ve never seen before means the drivers live by those traffic lights and the actual stops were pretty good, so one of them was a two-second stop.
“But the driver was waiting for the lights and obviously he didn’t go out, so everything went into quarantine and we can see it well.”
Forgotten weekend for Red Bull
Red Bull
Verstappen took one position in the race as he passed Alpine’s Pierre Gasly for the last time, but Tsunoda scored his first point in the ninth at Red Bull.
As a result, Verstappen left Randnoris’ 8-point drift in the driver’s championship, with Red Bull currently 80 points behind McLaren in constructor standings.
Horner plagued Red Bull’s Bahrain disaster with two fundamental issues: braking and balance.
“We’ve been struggling with two issues this weekend, the braking issue. Secondly, it’s just an imbalance and when we have it, everything seems to be getting worse,” he explained.
“Additionally, we had a terrible day, where we had something that looked like a problem with the wiring loom in the pit gantry, and there we had problems with the traffic light.
“Overall, to actually score sixth and limit that to Rand’s 8-point deficit in the challenges we have. We need to leave here.
Red Bull reportedly held a “crisis meeting” in Bahrain Padoc on Sunday night.