Mercedes fears Verstappen: "Red Bull ahead of performance"
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Mercedes expects it to be even harder in 2021 than it was last season. Andrew Shovlin and James Vowles told us in a Q&A that the RB16-B is a very good car that will most likely give Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas a hard time during the year.
When asked if this year is going to be a world championship where the differences are very small, Shovlin replied, "I’d start with, for what it’s worth it, every season feels close to us, none of them feel particularly ease and straight forward but where we finished that test, there are a lot of unknowns. No one up and down the paddock will be able to pinpoint exactly where they are, but there is a few trends that have come out."
Red Bull ahead of Mercedes
It's clear that Mercedes are trying to push the favourites role into the shoulders of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. "I would say Red Bull are ahead of performance, they are the class act from the test, but it is a test, not a race and it is one event out of 23. Are we going to have a close season? I would say so. Red Bull are a fierce adversary, they’ve got a strong package and clearly came out of the box very, very quick," explained the top man.
"The result of that is across the season and across different types of track layouts, I am sure you will see us move forwards and backwards relative to them but I don’t believe we are going into this particulary finding all the performance that is missing or being ahead of them."
Mercedes know they still have some work to do after the three days of winter testing in Bahrain. Simulations show that Red Bull are more than half a second faster when it comes to qualifying speed, but in the long runs the German formation seems to have things well in hand.