Marko: “GP Australia shows how everything can change quickly”

by VALERIO BARRETTA

Red Bull, weekend break

Since last Friday, it has emerged as the Red Bull at Albert Park wasn't as dominant as on recent occasions. The signs were already seen from Max Verstappen's excursion in FP1 which damaged the floor of the RB20, something that also happened with Sergio Perez. From here to the Ferrari double, other factors then intervened: the competitiveness of the SF-24, the penalty to the Mexican for theimpeding on Nico Hülkenberg in qualifying and – more importantly – the brake failure that ousted Verstappen from the Grand Prix.

Marko's words

The Dutchman's problem is a technical problem that Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko is unable to explain. Super Max is convinced that he could have kept up with Carlos Sainz, the Austrian admits that it would still have been difficult for Red Bull to fight with Ferrari, since the RB20 was not showing the obvious superiority of the other GPs: “We are yet to find out exactly what caused Max's brake failure, as most of the team are still scattered around the world returning from Melbourne. Unfortunately our weekend in Australia didn't start well from practice, we were clearly behind. There was no trace of the superiority we had in the first two races. The fact that we still managed to do so well in qualifying, with 1st place for Max and 6th for Checo, was a fantastic performance from the team“, this is the Austrian's comment in his column for Speedweek.

“However, Australia has shown how quickly the situation in F1 can change: from two dominant races to one in which we had to fight hard. However, the great balance was confirmed in Australia: Ferrari is the clear second force behind usMercedes is inconsistent, McLaren goes more or less fast depending on the track“.

Perez's race

Finally, the Austrian commented on the problems suffered by Perez, who ended up 56″ behind Sainz also due to a problem with the bottom: “Sergio didn't have a bad race, on the contrary. He suffered relatively extensive damage to the bottom due to driving over high curbs. On Friday, Max also learned how much they hurt. To be safe, we removed his engine so Honda could make sure he hadn't suffered any damage. We don't know exactly when Perez's floor suffered this damage, because at some points he was able to obtain the same times as the leaders, but then it dropped drastically with graining. It is not yet clear whether the extremely heavy wear was due to the faulty floor or whether our setup was too aggressive for the tires“.