"The car did not respond" as Red Bull wanted, says Pierre Wache
Having endured mixed fortunes during the three-day pre-season testing in Bahrain, Red Bull's technical director Pierre Wache has revealed that the Milton Keynes-based outfit will need to improve the situation as the RB21 did not respond how the team wanted.
Despite ending up second quickest on the final day of pre-season testing, reigning world champion Max Verstappen was not carried away by his team's performance at the Bahrain International Circuit.
The Dutchman shared mixed feelings after pre-season testing came to an end at the Bahrain International Circuit on Friday, saying there is “still a bit of work to do” for Red Bull.
The reigning four-time World Champion ended the day second on the timesheets, 0.021s away from Mercedes’ George Russell, with 81 laps to his name. However, the Hasselt-born driver indicated that his team will need to iron out a few issues before the season gets underway in Melbourne.
Red Bull's technical director Pierre Wache echoed Verstappen's words, claiming that the RB21 did not always respond how the Milton Keynes-based squad wanted.
"It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the Team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car.
"The weather was not with us and not very representative of this track, but we tried to explore the potential of the car and tried to understand how it responds to different set-ups, and I think we more or less achieved that.
"I think it’s very difficult to see a starting order for Melbourne across the grid right now, you see that four teams look quite quick, including us, but we didn’t look too much at other teams, we tried to focus on our programme.
"I am not as happy as I could be because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction, just maybe the magnitude of the direction was not as big as we expected and it’s something we need to work on for the first race and future development.”
