Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko says his team's RB18 car still has the potential to go even faster, despite having won four Grands Prix in a row. The RB18 remains overweight, admits Marko, even though Red Bull have fought hard to put the car on a strict early-season diet. There is, of course, no punishment for running a car heavier than the minimum 798kg: but the lighter the car is, the faster it will go. Marko predicts that Red Bull could go "a few tenths of a second" faster should they manage to lose their extra weight, a scary prospect for the likes of Ferrari who already find themselves fighting to keep up.
Red Bull and Mercedes can get lighter and faster
Marko believes that Ferrari are already close to the sport's minimum weight limit but conceded that Mercedes, who were close to the race-winning pace in Spain, join Red Bull in having weight still to lose. “Losing weight doesn't happen overnight,” Marko has told Formel1.de , with the team having recently faced DRS problems as a result of trying to cut weight from their car too fast. "It is therefore a positive point that we still have a reserve of a few tenths of a second as soon as we reach the minimum weight. "We are still too heavy," he continued. "However, we think Ferrari is already around the weight limit, while Mercedes are about the same weight as us."
Who has the faster car, Red Bull or Ferrari?
Despite Sergio Perez taking victory, Ferrari appeared to have the fastest car of all in Monaco with Charles Leclerc topping the timing sheets throughout all practice sessions and qualifying. But Marko says the Monaco weekend did not paint the true picture, with Red Bull much closer to Ferrari than most people would think. "The practice results in Monte Carlo say nothing about the real balance of power between Red Bull and Ferrari. Max had problems with a corner in all four sessions (including qualifying) worth three-tenths of a second," he continued. "In sector two and three, Verstappen was within a hundredth of a second, or even ahead of the rest. On his very last [qualifying] lap, he finally succeeded in the first sector and, according to our forecasts, he would have at least been on the front row. "I think Leclerc could not be caught up, but it does mean that those three to four-tenths of a second behind did not paint the true picture."
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