Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s driver development programme and an advisor to the Red Bull Racing F1 team, has admitted that the “first analysis” of the Barcelona pre-season testing session shows that Scuderia Ferrari has managed to “join” Mercedes and Red Bull at the front of the grid in the 2022 Formula 1 season.
In a recent interview for RTL, the Red Bull official explained that the “fine tuning” of the three “different technical concepts” ahead of the first race of the new championship will determine the pecking order in this start of the championship.
At the same time, he confirmed that Ferrari seems to be “the leader in the class” in regards to engine power. While Red Bull did not look as competitive in the first pre-season testing session at the Circuit de catalunya, Helmut Marko believes the Red Bull RB18 was “satisfactory in terms of both performance and mileage”.
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The drivers, Marko insisted, “got into the car and said ‘Yes, that feels good’. We still have weaknesses, but they seem to be fixable with relatively little technical effort,” the 78-year-old added. “The first impression was a very good one.”
As for Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton admitted Barcelona “wasn’t the easiest or smoothest test”, while new teammate George Russell denies the German team is playing games with sandbagging or making misleading statements in order to hide their true pace: “I don’t give a damn about stuff like that, I really don’t have time,” the Briton smiled – “I can only assure you that we are working our way through a complex program and I don’t give a damn about the times. And neither should the fans.”
When asked about the early pecking order, Helmut Marko believes it is going to be a fight between Mercedes, Red Bull and Scuderia Ferrari: “I am quite sure that we worked with more fuel than most of the other teams, so I think we are not inferior in speed to Mercedes and we are slightly ahead of Ferrari,” he concluded.
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