Red Bull’s motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has revealed that he slammed quadruple Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel for his early season performances.
The German, who had taken four consecutive Formula One titles for Red Bull Racing approached the new era of Formula One in a negative mood.
Testing had shown that Red Bull Racing was struggling for reliability, whilst performance wise that had fallen behind Mercedes.
The opening rounds of the new 2014 season compounded Vettel’s thoughts, whilst new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo also outperformed him on the track.
Vettel openly criticised the new regulations and has publicly been seen as being negative towards the teams own performances as Vettel struggled to perform under the new rules.
But after being read the riot act by Marko following the Chinese Grand Prix, Vettel appears to have knuckled down and has stopped whining, although he continues to be beaten by Ricciardo.
‘I told him: ‘There are 50 engineers working on this [Renault] engine and they can’t sort it out, You’re a top driver, it’s up to you. You have to do it.’ the 71-year-old told the BBC.
‘If he can’t sort out the car, the easiest thing is the driver. He has to raise his game.’ he added.
‘His main problem was the downshift was always destabilising the rear and he couldn’t understand that we couldn’t solve it.
‘Furthermore, he thinks the way F1 is going is not the right one – the cars should be monsters, not relatively easy to drive.
‘With all these problems, maybe he wasn’t as committed as he should have been, but that has changed. Already in Spain we saw already a different approach from this guy.’
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