Red Bull's tyre concerns at Portimao: 'We weren't quick on that tyre'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Following qualifying in Portimao, it has become clear that Mercedes are favourites for victory. Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton are both on the front row of the grid, followed by Red Bull Racing's cars. Max Verstappen will start ahead of his Mexican teammate Sergio Perez. All four drivers will start on yellow mediums in Portugal.
For Red Bull it is not an immediate advantage that all four drivers will start on the yellow tyres. Helmut Marko explained to ServusTV that in practice the yellow tyre did not perform optimally for his drivers. "Our speed on the yellow tyre does give us concerns. We were not competitive on it."
Different situation in the race
In the practice sessions, the drivers were not yet running with full tanks, so Marko is hopeful that the situation with full fuel tanks will be different to that in practice. "We hope this will change when all the cars are running with full tanks, because the way of warming up will be different then."
The Parc Fermé rules mean everything is largely fixed now, so there's not much left for Red Bull to change either. "You can only change the wings and tyre pressure now. First we have to see how we can separate the Mercedes drivers," Marko concludes.