Red Bull driver Max Verstappen expressed encouragement over the pace of the RB14 in Bahrain, despite his limited track time during Friday practice.
Verstappen’s car crawled to a halt exiting the final corner on only his second lap in the opening practice session due to an electrical fault.
Verstappen, assisted by marshals, pushed the stricken car back to the pit lane, but he was unable to return to the circuit across the remainder of the opening 90-minute session.
Verstappen’s RB14 was repaired for the second session, where he wound up fifth overall, 0.928s behind Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.
“These things happen so it doesn’t concern me looking ahead to the rest of the weekend,” said Verstappen of his stoppage.
“It was not ideal to miss so much track time, it meant that I spent the beginning of the second session searching for the balance of the car which took a while.
“For such a short time in the car I managed to find quite a good balance and the long run pace looked pretty positive.
“I was also happy with how the tyre degradation looked at the end of that session.
“Come race day it will depend a lot on strategy, you can follow at this track better than others so with the right planning and a bit of luck you can get a good result.”
Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo finished just 0.006s behind as he grabbed sixth position.
“This morning was pretty strong but the evening session was not as good; we made some changes that didn’t work as well as we hoped,” he said.
“I don’t just want to go back to the practice one car [set-up] as I think we can still make it better.
“We can find a happy medium on the balance and the overall feeling is not too bad.
“I don’t think the position this evening is too important. I got traffic on the first lap, so I had to go for the second lap, and for sure I lost a bit of lap time there.
“Mercedes will still turn it up in qualifying but we will be closer than where we were tonight.
“I’m confident that we will have a good car and tomorrow I’m sure we can be better than sixth and hopefully even better again in the race.”
