A former Red Bull engineer has brilliantly memed his old team after their devastating double retirement at last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
Having qualified second and fourth respectively, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez looked set to finish in those positions while the Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was in the lead.
However, a series of calamities would strike the Milton Keynes squad when a track rod broke on the Dutchman’s car after a pit stop, giving him a “heavy” steering wheel.
He then suffered a terminal failure late on after a Safety Car caused by Pierre Gasly’s engine failure, and the same fate then struck the 32-year-old, leaving with Red Bull with no points in the opening race for the fourth time since their arrival into Formula 1 in 2005.
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It helped Ferrari achieve a one-two finish, while Mercedes were gifted an unexpected podium.
The former Red Bull employee, named Dan, posted a meme of Luca Loutenbach, who at Euro 2020 last year, was seen crying in the stands when his Switzerland team went behind to France in Extra Time, before removing his shirt and celebrating wildly when they equalised.
Over the image of desolation, he wrote “Red Bull double DNF,” while the euphoria came in that “I don’t work there anymore.”
He tweeted “sorry not sorry,” and received a reply from another user, who had flipped the images and said “Red Bull winning WDC and WCC,” but “I don’t work there anymore.”
Red Bull have since carried out investigations into what exactly went wrong, and they confirmed that, while there was fuel left in the engine, a vacuum failure prevented it from being transferred to the engine, thus putting both cars out of the race.
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“Both cars suffered from a lack of fuel pressure last weekend. The correct amount of fuel was in both cars, but a vacuum prevented the pumps from drawing fuel and delivering it to the engine,” said a spokesperson.
“We’ve taken the necessary steps to correct this issue and we expect no problems this weekend.”
It will, however, undoubtedly be a concern that there was a failure on three of the four Honda-manufactured Red Bull power units last weekend.