Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s head of motorsport driver development is very optimistic for Red Bull Racing this year and believes that his team has never been so well prepared before the start of the season.
The Austrian also insisted that the only rival the reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton will have this year is Max Verstappen.
“As far as I can remember, Red Bull Racing has never been so well prepared,
“We have the speed and reliability. We have covered more than 5,000 kilometres, whereas in previous years we have never been able to reach such figures,
“Of course Mercedes is still the favourite, but I think Lewis’ main opponent for the title will be Max, I can’t think of any others. We can be sure that this year we won’t fall behind,
“In recent years we have had to wait until Barcelona to reach a competitive level, and last year we won our first race at Spielberg,
“This year we want to be competitive from the first race.” concludes Marko.
Honda, who also supply the AlphaTauri team, say they had worked hard in the off season to maintain reliability and deliver more power to enable Max to compete with Mercedes.
“We are making every effort to be there and fight for the championship,” said Honda F1 MD Masashi Yamamoto
“We had some unfortunate races last year, losing out in some of them, but we must avoid having those sort of races this year.
“Max says he wants to get on the podium at all the races, which is an aim we must support.”
Max concurs with the rhetoric, saying: “Everybody here knows that to be successful you need to fully understand the car, do a lot of laps and we were pleased with our testing in Barcelona,”
“We got good mileage, things ran pretty smoothly and that’s exactly what we wanted.
“I’d like to start the season strong, then it’s really on but we won’t know where we stand until Q2 and Q3 on Saturday in Melbourne, that’s where all the hard work over the winter really counts.”
A [court] case for Vettel to McLaren
Former F1 driver Timo Glock believes Sebastian Vettel may decide to leave Ferrari at the end of his contract [which expires at the end of the 2020 season] because of the ‘Ferrari Gate’ affair that has erupted in recent days.
“I think it all depends on how this case ends. I guess that might be a good reason for him to say….. READ MORE ON THIS STORY
Red Bull Racing might be better prepared than ever but seeing as Mercedes won the championship by over 200 points last year and there are no major rule changes this year, then surely Hamilton only has to turn up to the races to win yet another championship.