“It’s more beautiful to fight with Ferrari than with Mercedes” – Red Bull boss Helmut Marko is confident Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc will race clean, unlike Lewis Hamilton.
This season is poised to be a three-horse race, with Ferrari joining Red Bull in their attempt to knock Mercedes off the perch. And as things stand based on Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, it is more likely to be Red Bull vs Ferrari than Red Bull vs Mercedes.
Red Bull boss Helmut Marko prefers this, as Ferrari is the GOAT in the sport, and will ensure cleaner racing sans the politics, unlike Mercedes.
He also explained what trade-off led to Verstappen weaving his magic and beating Leclerc to the Saudi Arabian GP race win.
“It’s a new rivalry. Mercedes is at least half a second too slow at the moment, but who knows, they may be able to solve their problems. But we don’t sleep either. We work hard to further develop the car.
“I think it’s more beautiful to fight with Leclerc and Ferrari than with Mercedes. It is now more on a sporting level. I know we’ve only had two races, but I don’t think it will escalate like Mercedes.
“If Max sees his chance, he will go for it. His overtakes are incredible. We also decided on Friday to use a smaller rear wing, so that we had more top speed. The handicap was that we lost a few tenths in the first sector. Fortunately, it fell our way.”
Red Bull score points after Bahrain duck
Both Verstappen and Perez were to finish strongly in Bahrain, only for car failures to ruin their weekend. But Saudi Arabia was a different ball-game altogether, and race winner Verstappen is delighted with it.
“It was really tough but a good race. We were battling hard and tried to play the long game. The tyres were wearing out quite quick. At the end we had a bit more pace. It wasn’t easy playing smart tricks in the final corner. Really happy that we finally kickstarted the season.”
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