Red Bull’s F1 team principal Christian Horner said that he could understand his driver’s frustration as the Dutchman said that his retirement from the Australian Grand Prix was “unacceptable”. His early retirement from the race opened the gap even further in the driver’s standings.

The Dutchman had to retire at lap 39 in the Australian Grand Prix and felt that a chance to get an easy P2 had been taken away from him. He also said that he was “miles behind” race leader Charles Leclerc who was able to win his second race this season and is currently leading in the F1 championship.

Verstappen is currently at P6 in the driver’s standings and a huge 42 points below the Ferrari driver after not being able to finish two of the three races till now.

Horner agreed with what Verstappen had to say and said, “It’s totally understandable, his frustration. That was a really disappointing result not to finish the race. We don’t know what the issue is yet, I don’t think it was actually engine-related, I think it might be a fuel issue, but we need to get the car back, we need to look at what exactly happened?

“Until we get the car back, we don’t have the data, we don’t have the info. But desperately frustrating. I think as Max said, we didn’t have the pace to race Charles today – [Ferrari] were in a league of their own. But it’s frustrating not to be bagging those points.”

Verstappen’s driving partner Sergio Perez did manage to get a podium finish (P2) for the Red Bull team. Lack of pace and luck has led to the Red Bull racing team sitting third in the table behind Ferrari and Mercedes. Perez had to retire alongside his teammate in the opening race of the season too.

“It was very much a day of mixed emotions with Max not finishing… But we are in this as a team, and we will bounce back.

“It’s a long season ahead and we have the basis of a quick and competitive car, but we need to get on top of these issues quickly and we will keep pushing,” Horner further added.

Verstappen would be looking forward to the race at Imola on April 22-24 where the Dutchman won by 22 seconds last year. Meanwhile the Red Bull team would be looking at RB 18’s issues this week.

(Inputs from IANS)