Red Bull are still ‘out in the distance’, says Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton

SAKHIR – Formula One champions Red Bull and Max Verstappen, dominant last season, will start the new campaign next week still well ahead of the rest on the evidence of testing in Bahrain, rivals have said.

The Milton Keynes-based team won 21 of 22 races in 2023 and are clear favourites, with Verstappen chasing his fourth successive world championship title. They have also won 38 of the last 44 grands prix.

“I think Red Bull clearly are out in the distance,” Mercedes’ seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton told reporters on Feb 23, the third and final day of pre-season testing.

Verstappen topped the timesheets on the opening day but Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were fastest on the second and last day, although teams are running through their own test programmes with different fuel levels and settings and there is not much that can be concluded.

That said, others agreed they were playing a game of catch-up.

“There’s one car that seems to have found a big step,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said. “Unfortunately, (that’s) the car that was already the quickest last year.”

Leclerc said his initial feeling was that his car was much more driveable than last season’s but “Red Bull unfortunately remains quite a bit ahead”.

For Mercedes’ George Russell, Red Bull are “the favourites and a step ahead of everyone else”.

McLaren’s Lando Norris was another who admitted that there are fears that it could yet again be a one-horse race.

“I think we’re in a good position, we had a decent car at the end of last season, and I think we’ve definitely taken some steps in the right direction but we’re still a very long way behind Red Bull and a long way behind Ferrari,” he said.

Mercedes finished runners-up overall last season, but a massive 451 points behind Red Bull, with Ferrari a close third and McLaren, fourth.

Verstappen, who won a record 19 races last term with teammate Sergio Perez winning two, told reporters on Feb 23 that the RB20 had behaved as expected.

“I couldn’t really wish for more, I was actually wishing for less perhaps,” the Dutchman said of his first day of testing.

The 26-year-old did not participate on the second day and was fourth in the timesheets in the final session.

“I did a lot of laps, everything went well, the balance was very nice... completed the whole programme without any problems. For sure, the car is better than last year’s car but I think everyone on the grid has a better car than last year.”

The final day of running with the new cars was halted for some 80 minutes by a dislodged drain cover at Turn 11 – the second such incident in two days.

The track action resumed after repairs with the usual lunch break dropped and the session running through to the evening under floodlights.

Leclerc’s car suffered some floor damage on the second day and the third-day stoppage was triggered by Perez.

Verstappen said more checks were needed after the latest mishaps revived memories of an incident that caused considerable and costly damage to Sainz’s Ferrari at last November’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.

The Dutchman feared that the current high-downforce cars were making such incidents more likely with the suction of their aerodynamics.

“Maybe these kind of things can be checked a bit more. We know that this is a potential problem with these cars and, when you go to certain tracks, you know where the drain covers are,” he said.

“So, I guess, before you start driving at the weekend, double checking that everything is solid is a must for the upcoming tracks, (so) that we don’t have another situation where cars get destroyed.”

The record 24-race season starts in Bahrain next week, with practice on Thursday and the grand prix on Saturday, instead of the usual Sunday, as Formula One squeezes in the first two rounds in the Middle East before the start of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. REUTERS, AFP