Marko Downplays Red Bull Title Chances

Aston Martin Red Bull will undoubtedly be right up there battling with Ferrari and Mercedes in 2018. However, team advisor Dr Helmut Marko has downplayed the team’s aspirations of another title. While the atmosphere in the Red Bull camp is generally positive, Marko has opted for the cautious approach. The team are hoping to start the season strongly by bringing forward their development date of the RB14.

Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo are both eager to start attacking from the season opener in Melbourne on March 25. However, Marko does not share that same optimism that his drivers have. For him, the wounds of early 2017 are still fresh, namely, the team’s reliability issues. For his sake and the Austrian marquee’s, the Renault power unit should hopefully be a competitive and reliable one.

He said, “I don’t think we’re in a situation where we can already go for the world championship. The Renault engine should be more reliable and powerful in 2018, and we’ll be fighting with a competitive chassis at the outset. But Mercedes is producing a new engine, so the question is whether they’ll have an even bigger advantage. If the engine does what we’re promised, then we should be a lot closer to Mercedes.”

He continued, “Adrian [Newey, chief technical officer at Red Bull] saw that for the first time that we were able to beat Mercedes on our own and that you can race at the front when the engine is performing well. In the past we’ve always been stronger in the second half of the season. The analysis showed that we always tried to leave it as late as possible, but it doesn’t help to try and find a few hundredths every two weeks. It’s more important that you go into the season well prepared.”