Max Verstappen is fuming right now, luckily not literally! After today’s DNF, it’s Max’s second retirement in three races. And for both the retirements, poor mechanics and faulty engineering comes to blame and not Verstappen. This time around, it was a gas leak in the car.

During the Bahrain Grand Prix, the fuel supply ended Max’s race early, and the gas leak at the Australian Grand Prix. Both the situations needed immediate attention and response as both the situations could turn critical.

Max Verstappen feels they’re miles behind already

The Red Bull CEO Helmut Marko summarized the situation after the Australian Grand Prix. The situation at the Australian Grand Prix was dangerous, and that’s exactly why Max stopped as ordered by the team. But the Red Bull problems don’t just end at the mechanics.

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Red Bull’s pace is way off and they’re nowhere near Ferrari at the moment. Also, the Red Bull’s RB18 is too heavy at the moment. Coupled with the aforementioned and reliability issues for the RB18, the team has a lot of work ahead of them. Speaking with Formula 1 magazine, “Although our car was late, partly because we put a lot of effort into last year’s car, we’ve never had such reliability issues before. We have to get over them.” emphasized Marko.

Ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Red Bull still has a couple of weeks before to work on their machinery. Getting it at par with Ferrari as of now seems like a distant thought. But Red bull will work tirelessly towards the same. Ferrari is the most reliable of the lot right now and the championship is theirs for the taking.

Finding the magical combination

Red Bull needs to figure out and eradicate the reliability issue as soon as possible, for them to be a title challenger. Max is already 46 points behind the leader Charles Leclerc. The situation has the entire team hierarchy concerned.

But though they’re concerned, they’re not panicking yet! Marko reminded us of a situation from the past, “In 2012 we became champions after Sebastian Vettel was 42 points behind at the summer break.”. This would certainly give the team hope, as we’re only three races into the season.

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However, the Red Bull team and faithful alike are hoping for a quick solution to the slow-paced and unreliable car. Red Bull has an amazing team in Sergio Perez who finished runner-up at the Australian Grand Prix. And Max Verstappen, the defending world champion. It would be a shame if these two can’t be competitive because of their cars.