Max Verstappen believes Red Bull Racing has come away from this week’s in-season test at Sakhir with a better understanding of the balance issues that have impacted its RB15 since the start of its season.

Verstappen stepped on to the podium in Melbourne and finished fourth in last Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, but the Dutchman is far from happy with the current performance of his car.

Red Bull’s 2019 contender remains a work in progress however and Verstappen is confident the car’s full potential can soon be unlocked.

    Narrow operating window of RB15 challenging Red Bull drivers

“It cannot be worse than what we showed here,” he said, harking back to his race weekend.

“Also, we made some mistakes I think in terms of set-up. I think if you look back to Australia, we were actually quite happy.

“I think we can do a lot better than what we showed so far.”

Verstappen feels his performance is being held back by balance issues and more specifically the RB15’s lack of rear-end grip. But testing this week went a long way towards making sense of the car’s behavior and its narrow operating window as described last weekend by Christian Horner.

“You always want more downforce,” he added. “It’s also about how you can balance it and clearly we did something wrong during the weekend.”

“We did a good amount of laps to understand what went wrong on the weekend. I think we learned a lot from it already, so in that way I think it’s very positive.”

©RedBull