Aston Martin Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner described the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix as “brutally hash” after both his teams cars retired in the opening five laps.
The team had performed well on Friday and Saturday at the Bahrain International Circuit and believed they had the pace to challenge Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport on race day.
Daniel Ricciardo started fourth and was running behind Kimi Raikkonen when he ran into trouble.
“A brutally harsh race for us today.” Said Horner. “After an average start Daniel managed to move back up into fourth and was catching Kimi quite quickly.
“But then a complete electrical shutdown with a suspected failure to the energy store brought a premature end to his race.”
The other Red Bull car of Max Verstappen started fifteenth after the Dutchman crashed during qualifying but was making good progress through the field.
Verstappen made a move on Lewis Hamilton into turn one for tenth place when contact occurred.
“While Max made great progress in the first couple of laps, he was right on Lewis’ gearbox and lined up a pass into turn one and unfortunately contact on the exit of the corner gave Max a puncture and the resulting damage, and that sustained to the transmission driving back to the pits, ultimately caused his retirement.
“Both cars retiring within two laps is extremely disappointing particularly when we had a race car today that was capable of challenging Ferrari and Mercedes.”
Horner is fully focused on making up for their disappointment next weekend in China.
“Thankfully the next race is only one week away and congratulations to Toro Rosso on a fantastic race result.”
