Helmut Marko has quashed suggestions that Red Bull may be in a worse position than Ferrari in terms of how much more they can develop their car under the budget cap, with the Austrian citing Carlos Sainz's spate of incidents as having an impact on the Scuderia's finances. Red Bull have brought performance upgrades to the RB18 at recent race weekends, and this appears to have paid off, given Max Verstappen's back-to-back victories at Imola and Miami. Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto recently admitted that he was concerned by the pace of the Milton Keynes-based squad , but suggested that the team would be unable to keep on bringing updates given the financial impact of this. The Italian outfit, meanwhile, have not yet brought any significant upgrades to their car, with the first package set to be introduced at the upcoming Spanish Grand Prix.
Marko denies that Red Bull have used large percentage of budget
It is no secret that Red Bull have faced an issue with the weight of their car, and Marko admits that they have planned their updates in order to continually lose some kilograms from the RB18. "We plan our updates in such a way that we always lose weight with each update, because unfortunately we still haven't reached the minimum weight," Marko told German outlet Motorsport-Total.com . "And we won't quite reach it with the next update either." Marko also denies any suggestion of Red Bull having used a much larger percentage of the $140 million budget cap on developing their car than Ferrari have on theirs. "I don't think so," he added. "It's true that the increased logistics costs are a problem. But it's not just us, it's Ferrari and all the other teams."
Have Sainz's crashes had an impact at Ferrari?
Marko says that any talk of Red Bull having used up to 75 per cent of their development budget is "nonsense". The Austrian has gone on to question whether the recent crashes suffered by Sainz may have had an effect on Ferrari's finances. "I don't think we are in a significantly different position to Ferrari in this respect," Marko said of the budget cap issue. "Especially as I wonder what effect it has on them that Carlos Sainz has already crashed the car several times. It can't be cheap." Sainz spun out of the Australian Grand Prix in April, before another crash two weeks later during qualifying at Imola left him unable to move up into Q3. A further incident followed during Friday's practice sessions at the inaugural Miami Grand Prix, though the rest of the weekend proved mostly trouble-free for the Spaniard, who qualified on the front row before taking P3 in Sunday's race.
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