Frustration over Bahrain result behind manager and Marko's 'garage row' · RaceFans

Max Verstappen said the reported row in Red Bull’s garage between his manager and Helmut Marko was a result of the team’s frustration at its performance in Bahrain.

The reigning world champion recorded his worst result of the season so far last week. He finished sixth in Bahrain after a last-lap pass on Pierre Gasly for sixth place.

Afterward reports claimed Verstappen’s manager Raymond Vermeulen was seen having a heated argument with Marko, Red Bull’s motorsport consultant.

Verstappen claimed the pair “were having just a conversation about everything, which I think is allowed.

“Now, if someone picks up on it, people can always see it in their own way — how people are discussing things.”

However he admitted the discussion was triggered by the team’s poor result in Bahrain. “We were all left frustrated with the result and, of course, the things that went wrong in the race. I think that’s where my manager Raymond and Helmut spoke about it — and even Christian came along as well. So they all had a conversation.”

Verstappen won the preceding round at Suzuka and is only eight points behind championship leader Lando Norris. He said it’s “out of his hands” whether his car is competitive enough for him to fight for a fifth consecutive world championship this year.

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“Hopefully it will be better than Bahrain. If we can be a bit in the middle of the two, I think we can already be happy with that and we just move on. The rest is out of my hands anyway.

“At the moment, we’re not the quickest [so] naturally it’s very tough to fight for a championship. But it’s still a very long road.

“I mean, we were sitting around this time last year, race five, and it was all looking great — and then we all know how the season ended up. So I’m hopeful that we can still improve things and we’ll see what we get.”

Marko claimed last week Verstappen could take advantage of an exit clause to leave Red Bull before his current deal expires. Verstappen dismissed further questions over whether he might change teams at the end of the year.

Asked whether he would prefer team members did not speak publicly about his contract, Verstappen said: “I think we had really good chats in the last few weeks already with the people about the car. I think we are all very much aligned.

“Like I said, we’re just trying to improve the situation. It doesn’t change anything. So we’ll just keep going.”

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