Troubled Red Bull search for path back to F1 fast lane

JEDDAH – Ailing Red Bull arrive 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 last week

in sombre mood, their limitations laid bare under the harsh floodlights in the desert of Sakhir.

Here are the 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 finishing in sixth and over half a minute behind Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri who won in Bahrain.

The 27-year-old Dutchman 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.

Crisis talks

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 adviser 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, 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,” he said.

“We understand where the issues are, it’s introducing the solutions that obviously takes a little more time.”

Verstappen, who was plum last at one stage in Bahrain, 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,” he said.

“Everything is just highlighted even more on a track like this.”

One-man band

Red Bull would be in even worse shape if it was not 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 April’s triple-header was only down to arguably his greatest-ever qualifying performance.

The machine’s idiosyncracies proved too tough a riddle to solve for the unfortunate Liam Lawson, who was unceremoniously dropped to their sister team Racing Bulls after just two races.

The Kiwi’s successor Yuki Tsunoda finished out of the points in Suzuka before adding two from ninth place in Sakhir.

Without an effective “wingman” to help him in races, Verstappen is left to do it all on his own.

Exodus of talent

It can surely be no coincidence that Red Bull’s malaise comes after some of their brightest brains have jumped ship.

The team were shocked when legendary design guru Adrian Newey, at the heart of developing cars that won numerous drivers’ and constructors’ championships, quit to join Aston Martin.

Another huge loss was the departure of sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, who took up his new role as Sauber team principal earlier in April.

Red Bull’s head of race strategy Will Courtenay also left for McLaren, where former chief designer Rob Marshall had moved to in 2024. AFP