Red Bull had a challenging day at Zandvoort on Friday, but Helmut Marko has clarified the issue.
Helmut Marko has attributed Red Bull’s unexpectedly slow performance throughout Friday practise at the Dutch Grand Prix on misunderstanding the Hard tyre.
At Zandvoort, Max Verstappen missed the majority of free practise 1 due to a gearbox issue, and Sergio Perez had to close a significant gap to Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari in free practise 2 of more than one second.
Red Bull had downplayed expectations going into Zandvoort after dominating the field at Spa previous weekend, but a better Friday than eighth and 12th in FP2 was anticipated.
Young driver boss Helmut Marko said that the Hard tyre was to blame for the problems.
Hard tyre is overestimated by Red Bull
“We drastically overestimated the value of the Hard tyres,” Marko explained to media including RacingNews365.com.
“We felt good on those tyres, when we thought we would have not grip on those tyres.”
Marko confesses that this put Red Bull into a false sense of security, and the team struggled with balance and speed as a result.
“At the moment, we have don’t have a good balance, no grip, and the tyres overheated way too quickly.
“[Sergio] Perez had all those problems in first practice, but we thought it was just his Friday form. Often it is not very impressive.
“The hard tyre probably won’t even be used during the race – that’s why we drove on it right at the start of FP1 – because we wanted to get rid of it.
“We were at the front on those tyres, so we thought we were in a good position.”
Work to do at home GP for Verstappen
“It means that we have to work hard again for Saturday and Sunday to get the car in the window in which it works optimally,” added Marko.
“At the moment we are relatively far from that.
“It wasn’t bad in the long run in FP2, because by then we had already adapted a few things to the car. However, the tyre wear was much too high.”
“Still Gianpiero Lambiase, Max’s race engineer, was positive. He said he thought he knew the root causes of the problems, so I’m not worried yet.”
“It is clear that it is closer together here than it was in Spa. The corners are a bit slower here, we are going for the podium at least.
“That would be enough for us. Both Ferrari and Mercedes could win here.”
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