{"id":493374,"date":"2026-02-20T22:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/493374\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T22:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:58:08","slug":"max-verstappen-hands-red-bull-obvious-verdict-as-pre-season-testing-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/493374\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen hands Red Bull &#8216;obvious&#8217; verdict as pre-season testing ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Max Verstappen has outlined that it is &#8220;quite obvious&#8221; Red Bull Racing needs to find more performance following the conclusion of pre-season testing.<\/p>\n<p>The Dutchman was in the RB22 for his final running on Friday afternoon, completing 65 laps, the best of which was a 1m 33.109.<\/p>\n<p>It means that the four-time world champion was unable to join Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in posting a 1m 32 this week, while Charles Leclerc was alone in the 1m 31s.<\/p>\n<p>Just how much Verstappen was pushing and how turned up Red Bull&#8217;s engine was remain unknown, but it would appear the Austrian outfit is perhaps behind Mercedes and Ferrari.<\/p>\n<p>Crucially, significant mileage has been completed by Red Bull and sister squad Racing Bulls, representing valuable data for Red Bull Powertrains.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, there are many positives for Verstappen to take from pre-season, but the 28-year-old is aware the RB22 needs to be faster.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This week has been a good start,&#8221; said Verstappen. &#8220;For my runs in the car, we\u2019ve basically completed the full programme, so that was good as we have plenty of data to go over and analyse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Going into Bahrain testing, I think we prepared as well as we could and the team have done a great job to get to where we are.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it is quite obvious, of course, that there is still quite a bit of work to do for us to be faster so this is something we will be working on.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let\u2019s see what we get in Melbourne: it will be great to be back racing but we still have to work hard.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen has outlined that it is &#8220;quite obvious&#8221; Red Bull Racing needs to find more performance following&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-493374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}