Serious accusations against Red Bull and Verstappen that the teams’ pace is too good to be true. Red Bull are Formula 1’s current benchmark. Winners of the first three races of the season have been Max Verstappen and team mate Sergio Perez. the current pairing for the powerhouse team. With 123 points, the Austrian outfit has almost double the points of Aston Martin in second place in the F1 Constructors’ Championship.
World champions Verstappen and Perez dominated the first two Grands Prix in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. However, the gap to Mercedes & the rest of the field. was unusually small at the Australian Grand Prix. Verstappen qualified ‘just’ over 0.2 seconds quicker than Silver Arrows George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.
Granted, this is still a comfortable lead, but it is smaller than the pundits expected before the weekend.
And Mercedes have been able to hold their own in the race – unusually well, too. Team boss Toto Wolff said afterwards: “We were ahead by our own efforts, but you mustn’t have any illusions. The Red Bulls are already in a league of their own.”
Sandbagging to avoid drastic rule changes
According to Mercedes George Russell, Red Bull are ‘sandbagging’ their performances now, deliberately slowing down and not getting too far ahead of the field.
The British driver was on the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast saying: “Certainly they’re holding back.”
He added: “I think realistically they’re probably seven tenths ahead of the rest of the field.” confirming what this website claimed some months ago during winter testing.
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The Mercedes driver, who is currently seventh in the drivers’ championship, says:
“I think they’re almost embarrassed to show their full potential because the faster they seem, the more the sport will try to hold them back somehow.”
The team mate to Lewis Hamilton suggesting that the FIA and Formula 1 management could seek to alter the rules to rein in the Red Bull dominance.
Red Bull merely mimics Mercedes
Russell might well be rabbiting the chat with the Mercedes team; of those veteran team members who recall the utter dominance the German marque had over the field back in 2014 and 2015. Something publically team boss Toto Wolff is keen to deflect and fail to admit to, even now.
In 2014, Mercedes was more dominant than any other team in the history of Formula 1. At least that’s the perception of Paddy Lowe, former senior technical boss of Mercedes at the time.
“I don’t think any other team has ever had that much of a lead. In 2014, the situation was that we could adjust how much of a lead we needed on a given day. And that went on for a few races during the season,” Lowe said a week ago on Formel1.de’s YouTube channel.
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The story is still denied by Toto Wolff even to this day:
“Paddy must have been in a different team than I was,” said the Mercedes team boss, asked by Motorsport-Total.com about Lowe’s statements, 2021.
“The situation that an engine is turned back just because of the rules doesn’t exist. But maybe Paddy was under that impression...”
Indeed the Mercedes team back then appeared to be able to stretch out their lead at will, but seemed often not to. Most likely to avoid having the rules altered to cobble their performance lead. Certainly, something that occurred on more than one occasion in the past to dominant teams, an example being Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari outfit of the early 2000’s.
History yet again seems to repeat itself.
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Lando racing hard Down Under. 👊 What a battle this was. #AusGP 🇦🇺
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) April 3, 2023
What is hilarious is the pundits with their noses inside hamiltons ass, are saying that he is not being beaten by Russel because Hamilton is the sole brain, designer and test engineer behind Mercedes gains this and last season.
So if Hamilton being a driver can be the engineer, designer, tester and implementer for todays formula, then why can’t Marko be the same for the ground effect car success since he was involved in its last iteration decades ago? Hence RB’s success….
Lolz, I don’t think either is true. I just think Newey has a team under him that he has mentored to not solely rely on computer simulations to develop aero. So they are able to develop a car and stay with the computer data and wind tunnel limits.
Is it all down to the designers? No. Is it all down to the drivers? No.
The tell alls that came out last season have shown that the main engineer transmitting data to the driver, coaching him on settings and when/where to turn, accelerate, brake and when to push which button… is almost more important than the driver in the car.
I’m surprised that there has not been more focus on the “Bono’s” of F1 considering.
I guess if they became celebrities they would get paid more.
It’s amazing that no one ever complained about Mercedes when they ran away with the title year after year. Now it’s RBs turn and all of a sudden they are talking about rule changes to help Moaning Minnie Hamilton.,The sooner he leaves F1 the better 😁
Peter,I stand by your comment.Hamilton and Mercedes are so jealous of Red bull.Max and the Red bull,you are the best and I think Hamilton should go and get another job,too old for racing
Of course rules will change. It happens all the time. It happened way back when mcclaren were dominant, then when Williams were dominant, benetton, ferrari, red bull (first time), Mercedes and now red bull again. With every major rule change their is often one team that aces it and to promote competition rules get changed to bring the field back together. It’s happened in my 40 years following the sport time after time to many teams and I expect it will happen again. Only this time I expect it will happen sooner because the American owners seek to be more intent on entertainment than on sporting merit and a one horse race is no good for “the brand”
Wow russel has the mercedesvirus to…keep up that lip boy you end up the same but with 0 titles….i never ever seen a team more hypocrite and discusting as Mercedes..always stirring up useless shit…grow up get over it and make a better car! Remember red bull has wings 🤣
Love the comments.Red bull power all the way
More to the point, Redbulls overspend in 2021 that led to the windtunnel penalty out them a year ahead of everyone else. It’s a good strategy, o erspend, take the penalty and take the title for the next few years. The penalty was a drop in the ocean compared to the benefits gained.
Propaganda fake news to make Mercedes and Hamilton look bad and Redbull and Max nothing but great! Never good news about Checo though….. Is Judge 13 on redbull payroll I’d like this investigated… Start with companies house I think.