Formula 1 | Marko pinches McLaren: “We lapped them twice per race with the same engine”

Speaking to the columns of Motorsport-Magazin, Helmut Marko made a comparison between the proclamations launched by McLaren in 2015 and those made by Red Bull during the last few weeks, underlining how the Austrian Scuderia can count on a different technical situation compared to the one existing between McLaren and Honda in the past.

The Austrian, precisely in this sense, underlined the huge gap existing between Red Bull and the Woking Scuderia during the last season, specifying how the objective for the future will be to create the right mix between aerodynamic load in corners and power on the straight, fundamental aspects to be able to compete on equal terms with Mercedes and Ferrari.

Here are the words of Helmut Marko: “We lapped McLaren twice last season, mostly with the same engine, so what do you think the problem was? Of course, if we look only at the downforce, we should carefully evaluate the Spa race."

“We took to the track with maximum wing and full aerodynamic load, aspects that allowed us to be the fastest in the corners, but this led us to lose ground on the straights”, he continued. “Continuing in this way would have gotten us nowhere, since to achieve all objectives you have to create a compromise. A victory is decided by lap time, not by corner speed."

On the collaboration with Honda for 2019 he added: “There is a risk and they know very well that they have to recover in view of 2019, but this does not deter them. We know that we won't be able to count on just three engines like Ferrari and Mercedes."

“Max and Daniel have shown that it is possible to reach the top even by recovering. On a couple of occasions we started from the back, but after two or three laps we were close to the front."he concluded.