At Barcelona, if you didn’t stand on the podium at the Spanish Grand Prix you hadn’t finished on the lead lap.
Eventual race winner Lewis Hamilton lapped everyone in his Mercedes up until third placed finisher Daniel Ricciardo in his Red Bull Racing.
This was due in part to both Max Verstappen of Red Bull and Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari retiring on the first lap after a first corner collision and team-mate Valterri Bottas retiring later in the race due to an engine failure.
But outside of the top three teams, both Mercedes and Ferrari’s dominance was evident.
Even Ricciardo finished over 1minute and 15 seconds behind the former three-time Formula One World Champion.
But should Red Bull Racing be concerned with the huge performance lag in Spain?
‘If you look at the weekend as a whole, we have definitely addressed some of the issues and definitely made some progress with the car,’ Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner told motorsport.com.
Horner admitted that Red Bull are behind Mercedes and Ferrari on pace, but not as much as the time difference showed as Ricciardo had turned his engine down to aid the power-units shelf life.
‘Daniel had a pretty lonely race, benefiting from Bottas’ retirement, and pretty much from halfway through the race we turned the engine down to try to save engine life, as obviously it has to do quite a few events.
‘The pace to the front running cars was pretty significant, so we still have plenty to do. But we feel we have made some progress here this weekend. It has given us a very clear development direction and we hope to be able to capitalise on that in the coming races.’
Share this article
Related Articles
