Max Verstappen admits “we struggle with grip and the gap to McLaren is huge”. Max Verstappen discusses the challenges he faced during FP2 at the 2025 Bahrain GP.

It wasn’t a particularly positive or easy Friday for Max Verstappen, poleman and winner of the last Japanese Grand Prix, but only on track for the second practice session of the Bahrain GP. In FP1, Yuki Tsunoda had as his teammate the fellow Japanese Ayumu Iwasa, a member of the Red Bull Junior Team, with Iwasa later handing the car over to the four-time world champion for FP2.

The Struggles

Back on track for the last session of Friday, the Dutchman ended up only in seventh place, facing several difficulties in the late afternoon session in Sakhir: “Today’s session was tougher, even though it was a shorter day for me since I had limited driving time as Ayumu was in the car for FP1,” he commented. “It took a few laps to get into rhythm, the balance wasn’t bad, but we struggled a lot with grip. As a team, we approached Friday a bit differently than our competitors. We have quite a bit of work to do in the long term, and hopefully tomorrow will be more fun.”

The Gap to McLaren

Max Verstappen repeated the same issues in the interview with the official F1 media, also adding about the big gap that separates Red Bull, and others, from McLaren, the dominant team in these sessions: “I’m not completely satisfied, but I struggled a lot with grip in general. The balance wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t much fun in the long run. The gap is huge, yes, very big.”