“Going Back to Normal”
Red Bull had a somewhat disappointing race pace in Austria. The Ferraris were clearly faster and could have even scored a 1-2 finish, had it not been for Carlos Sainz’s breakdown. According to Max Verstappen, the leak at his team is above water.
Red Bull appeared in Austria with a few minor updates, especially to the floor of the car. Those updates followed a larger package of new parts a week earlier in England. Updates that should have made the RB18 faster, but clearly didn’t work out well in Austria. Despite a promising sprint race, Red Bull was no match for Ferrari in the Grand Prix on Sunday.
The team now knows that the updates have pushed the car in the wrong direction. Verstappen speaks in France, prior to the race weekend at Paul Ricard, of a combination of new parts that did not work well together. “We don’t need to get any updates on the car, but we may need to apply some other ideas. Anyway, I hope we have learned from it.” According to Verstappen, it is important to first “go back to normal”, although it remains the case that Ferrari has taken a small step since Austria. “They were certainly a little faster than we expected. But we were also a lot less fast than we had expected. On a good day we have a nice battle with them, but we didn’t have a good day.”
In short, in France it is hopefully a little more evenly matched. At the bottom of the line, however, Red Bull is the second team at the moment, according to the 24-year-old world champion. “Overall, I think we are still chasing. That was certainly the case at the beginning of the season. After that Ferrari had a few failures, but now it feels like chasing again,” said the Limburger. “It depends on the track, but in general they had more dominant weekends than us.” The race weekend in France officially started at 2 p.m. with the first free practice. Qualifying starts on Saturday at 4 p.m., the race starts on Sunday at 3 p.m.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl