Red Bull reveals intriguing reason behind Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda's slow pit stops

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has revealed that a wiring loom issue was what led to Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda's slow stops. The F1 Bahrain GP was a disastrous one for the Austrian team. The car was just not competitive enough, and it got exposed during the race.

However, what was even more surprising to see was the kind of bad decision-making that Red Bull is not associated with. The team is notorious for being as precise as it could get when it comes to putting together race strategies and plans. Yet, the race saw the team saving two hard tires for Max Verstappen.

Things turned from bad to worse for Max Verstappen from that first pit stop onwards when the driver put on hard tires. The tires had no grip, and to make things worse, the slow pitstop meant that he was stuck behind the Haas of Esteban Ocon.

What also stood out was the slow pitstops for both Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda. There was apparently an issue with the lights, which meant that the malfunction on the device ended up hurting the driver.

Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, after the race, Red Bull's Christian Horner revealed that it was a wiring loom issue that hurt the stops. He said:

"We've been struggling with two issues this weekend, a braking issue, and, you know, secondly, just an imbalance, and when you have that then everything looks worse. On top of that, we've had a horrible day where we had what looks like a wiring loom issue in the pit gantry that caused there to be a problem with the traffic light."

He added:

"So, yes, all in all, to actually come away with a 6th place and limit it to an 8-point deficit to Lando with the challenges that we've had, you know, we need to leave here, obviously focus on what we can sort out for Jeddah in 5 days' time."

Red Bull on how both Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda got compromised

Christian Horner pointed out that the biggest issue was the fact that both Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda are heavily reliant on the traffic lights system that had been put in place. When that stopped working, both of them were just stuck there, and that compromised them. He said:

"I think we need to look into it. I've just heard that there was some kind of wiring or electrical issue with the gantry. One I certainly haven't seen before, where I mean the drivers live by those traffic lights, and the actual stops were pretty good, one of them was a two-second stop. But then the driver's waiting for the lights and obviously it didn't go out so everything's gone into quarantine and we'll have a good look at it."

It will be interesting to see how Red Bull and Max Verstappen bounce back from this. What happened in Bahrain was not the norm, and the team would be trying to get the right expectations in place.