Red Bull Racing was dealt a hard blow on Sunday afternoon. The Austrian racing team seemed to be on the way to a podium finish with Max Verstappen, but saw him drop out in the closing stages. Sergio Perez did not make it to the finish either, and according to Mark Hughes, this may well be because of themselves.
During the test days in Barcelona and Bahrain, Red Bull were very relaxed. The team of Verstappen and Perez tried out several parts and proved to be competitive against the rest of the grid. On the final day Red Bull decided to do a major update to the car, changing the sidepods and floor among other things.
According to Hughes, this was very short notice though, he writes on Motorsportmagazine.com. "In such a compressed timeframe there were a few little jobs which were not ticked off which most other teams managed to do," Hughes states. "One of which was running the car almost dry to see if there were any fuel pick-up problems."
Red Bull investigates RB18 for problems
Meanwhile, Red Bull is working hard to investigate where the problem lies. While on Sunday evening it still thought it would be the fuel pump, research reportedly shows that this is not the case. In a few days time the problem will need to be solved, because the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend starts this week.