Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko seemed to have had the last laugh after his bold prediction ahead of the season opener in Australia turned out to be true. After pre-season testing, the Austrian had audaciously claimed that only McLaren were faster than Red Bull, a remark that caught both fans and experts by surprise.
Several fans also mocked the 81-year-old for making such a prediction by stating that Mercedes and Ferrari had better pace than the Bulls. But with Max Verstappen behind the wheel of the RB21, one can never bet against him.
After qualifying an outstanding third, just behind the two McLarens of polesitter Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, Verstappen managed to finish second and even threatened the Briton for the win in the dying stages of the race.
Still, as the Dutchman did not have as much pace in the RB21 to challenge the MCL39 of Norris, Marko has revealed where Red Bull needs to work upon relative to McLaren.
“In Bahrain, McLaren was much quicker than us, from half a second to a full second,” Marko explained. “Here, however, we managed to go like them for a few laps before tire degradation came and slowed us down. This is our main problem, the one we need to work on”.
Tricky conditions but good fun! Solid start, let’s keep pushing @redbullracing pic.twitter.com/VFJM7GBXXC
— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) March 16, 2025
Verstappen also echoed a similar concern after the race. “The McLarens were much faster, which was clear in the first part of the race,” the 27-year-old told ViaPlay. “They handle their tires better, whereas mine overheat more quickly. So, finishing second is a good result”.
Marko believes it will take Red Bull somewhere between three to five races to fix their problems with tire degradation. This means that McLaren are likely to have the advantage over the Milton Keynes-based outfit until round six in Imola.
While Marko may be optimistic about the races ahead after Verstappen’s second place, Red Bull definitely had more concerns than just tire degradation. It is just that the Dutchman is so brilliant that no one notices them.
Liam Lawson’s struggles suggest Red Bull still have work to do
The season opener in Australia saw six drivers crashing out and one of them was Lawson. The New Zealander has had a torrid weekend in Melbourne, as first he was knocked out of Q1 and qualified only 18th. Then, he did not have the best of race starts either as he could barely make up the ground he lost during qualifying.
Red Bull then decided to gamble with him by pitting him late. However, it did not pay off for him as the conditions were too wet for his medium tires and he ended up colliding into the barriers at the exit of turn one, the same spot where Isack Hadjar had collided on the formation lap.
Reflecting on his race weekend, Lawson echoed similar concerns to Verstappen, with the key difference being that the four-time champion was able to manage the situation significantly better while the New Zealander struggled.
“It basically dried up more than we thought and we struggled a lot with the fronts in the first stint, just overheating, and then towards the end it dried up, we went to the slick,” he said after the race. “Honestly, the pace on the slick was okay for those few laps, but in the end, it started raining more than we thought”.
While no one will blame Lawson for his race-ending crash, he will certainly need to find a way to match Verstappen, which has been far from easy as history suggests.
Red Bull will want both drivers to perform after they failed to retain the Constructors’ title last season, after Verstappen’s former teammate Sergio Perez could not even manage to score half of the Dutchman’s points tally,
