Red Bull given Verstappen ‘very difficult to manage’ warning after RB21 admission

Guenther Steiner fears Max Verstappen will become “very difficult to manage” at Red Bull if the team does not make a flying start to F1 2025.

That comes after the admission from Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache that their new creation – the RB21 – “did not respond” how the team expected at stages of the Bahrain test, leaving work to be done ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

Red Bull warned ‘an unhappy Max is not a nice Max’

Red Bull are looking to rebound from what turned into a challenging second half of 2024, with balance issues setting into their RB20 as the team went 10 races without a win at one stage after a trademark dominant start to the season.

Verstappen was able to hold off the charge of McLaren’s Lando Norris to win a fourth World Championship in a row, but Red Bull slipped from the Constructors’ summit to P3.

The RB21 is tasked with turning the tide and is the first Red Bull challenger not to be formed under the watch of F1 design legend Adrian Newey since the RB2, and Wache admitted that there remains work to do after the three-day test in Bahrain ahead of the F1 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

“It was not as smooth a test as we expected and the team expected, but it is better to find some problems here than later down the line and it is why we are here, to understand the car,” he said.

“The weather was not with us and not very representative of this track, but we tried to explore the potential of the car and tried to understand how it responds to different set-ups, and I think we more or less achieved that.

“I am not as happy as I could be because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction, just maybe the magnitude of the direction was not as big as we expected and it’s something we need to work on for the first race and future development.”

And in an interview with CNN, Red Bull’s former technical operations directed and ex-Haas team boss Guenther Steiner was asked how he thinks Verstappen will react if things do not go his way at the start of F1 2025.

“I would say last year, when he started not to win, he reacted, pretty aggressively,” Steiner replied. “But then at some stage, I think he realised, ‘I need to be smart about this and just take home as many points as I can, even if I’m not winning a race’.

“So we need to see which Max we get.

“But for sure, if he hasn’t got a good car where he can win, he will get very difficult to manage as well, I would say, because he will be vocal about it that he’s not happy. And an unhappy Max is not a nice Max, as we all know.

“But he’s a very good driver, I think the best in the moment. And for sure, he will put his effort in to win races, to win the championship again, but it will not be easy, as we saw last year.”

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And regardless, Steiner believes it is in Verstappen’s best interests, as well as Red Bull’s, that he does not go down the ‘very difficult to manage’ route.

Asked what he would be saying to Verstappen ahead of his pursuit of a fifth straight World Championship in F1 2025, Steiner said: “To stay calm, but don’t throw the toys out of the pram after two races if it doesn’t go your way.

“‘If it is not in our way, in the beginning of the season, we need to work hard to get back where we want to be’, you know, because getting impatient and complaining doesn’t help a team, doesn’t put the team together, and obviously that is what you need when you’re not competitive.

“But first of all, I would say, ‘just let’s wait to see where we are at and then we see where we want to go, and where we can go’.”

Verstappen has a new Red Bull team-mate for F1 2025, Liam Lawson stepping up from Racing Bulls following the departure of Sergio Perez.