Max Verstappen claims Red Bull car had multiple problems during Bahrain Grand Prix

Max Verstappen admits his Red Bull car suffered multiple problems following his woeful start to the new F1 season in Bahrain.

The reigning world champion was forced to retire after his Red Bull car failed with three laps remaining.

Verstappen had berated his team over the radio during the race and complained of battery failure moments before he was forced to pull into the pits.

Red Bull engineers are investigating the exact cause but the team has said that a ‘fuel pump issue’ is suspected to be the reason behind Verstappen being forced to retire.

Speaking after the race, Verstappen admits he was unhappy with ‘different issues’ during the race and says retiring from races ‘shouldn’t happen’.

‘We don’t fully understand why it happened but it definitely happened after the tyres came on and I drove off,’ Verstappen said.

‘It wasn’t even that the steering just got heavy, it was almost impossible to steer, and the faster I was going it felt also like there was a delay, so every time I was turning right it took a while before something was happening.

‘That’s why my restart was really bad. Because I wanted to go on throttle but I couldn’t open my wheel because it was stuck.

‘It was very hard out there, a lot of different issues we had to deal with. This is of course not what you want to happen in the first race weekend.

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‘The pace wasn’t amazing. I think the balance wasn’t as good on Friday for whatever reason, which we have to understand of course. Just a lot of things to analyse.

‘Of course, you can always say