Max Verstappen's furious Bahrain GP F1 radio outburst in full
After making his third pit stop on Lap 44, Max Verstappen reported a strange steering issue to his Red Bull Formula 1 race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.
Max Verstappen: “Mate, my steering wheel is suddenly very heavy. I almost can’t steer.”
Gianpiero Lambiase: “Let me know if you need to box Max”
MV: “Just fu----- tell me what's wrong and how to handle it.”
GP: “Max, Is the wheel heavy in both directions? Both left hand and right hand?”
MV: “Everywhere, everywhere. It’s not even smooth. I have to ---- even on the straights.”
The Safety Car was deployed on Lap 46 due to Pierre Gasly’s stricken AlphaTauri but Red Bull kept Verstappen out.
GP: “We are staying out. We don’t believe it’s a reliability concern at this stage.”
After the Safety Car restart, Verstappen’s pace dropped as he fell into the clutches of Carlos Sainz before trundling into the pit lane at the end of Lap 54 to retire from the race.
MV: “What’s going on with the battery?”
GP: “The battery is fine”
MV: “It’s not, what the fuck is this?”
GP: “We can see the issue, Max, it’s not battery-related.”
MV: “What do you want me to do?”
GP: “There’s not a lot we can do. Try to make it into the pit lane Max.”
Up until his third pit stop, it had been a solid race for the reigning champion as he was on course to finish second behind eventual race winner Charles Leclerc.
Verstappen took the lead on multiple occasions but couldn’t maintain it as Leclerc’s ‘clever’ defence kept him out front.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner suspects the issue which affected both Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez was related to the fuel system.
Explaining his angry outbursts after the race, Verstappen said: “I’ve been angrier before. I don’t hold back, I say what I think in the car. I was not happy with what we were doing or the balance of the car I had, the strategy.
“It was not necessarily directed to GP, I have a really good relationship with him, but he’s the only one I can talk to. We have to analyse quite a few things.”
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