How Sergio Perez’s pace can counter George Russell’s sandbagging claims

George Russell believes Red Bull were sandbagging at the Australian Grand Prix, the team “embarrassed to show their full potential”, but that’s not true says Christian Horner.

After all, says the team boss, Sergio Perez was having to hustle to recover from his pit lane start and he could only manage fifth place at the Australian Grand Prix.

Red Bull, without a doubt, been in a league of their own this season with the Milton Keynes squad racing out to a 58-point lead in the Constructors’ Championship thanks to a hat-trick of victories, two of which were 1-2 results.

But while Max Verstappen was 38s up on the road from the nearest non-Red Bull car in Bahrain and Perez was 15s ahead of that same car, Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin, in Saudi Arabia, it was a lot closer at the Australian Grand Prix.

Although the race was interrupted by two red flags, the maximum gap Verstappen was able to pull out over second-placed Lewis Hamilton during a period of 40 laps of green flag running was just under 10 seconds. Russell believes that’s because Red Bull were holding back.

“For sure, they’re holding back. I think they almost are embarrassed to show their full potential. I think realistically they probably have seven-tenths advantage over the rest of the field,” the Mercedes driver told the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast.

“I don’t know what the pace difference looks like at the moment, but Max has got no reason to be pushing it, nor [have] Red Bull.”

But while Verstappen didn’t need to push it at the Albert Park circuit, the Dutchman himself conceding he was okay losing places to the Mercedes drivers at the start given he “knew” he had the fastest car on the grid, his team-mate Perez had to.

PlanetF1.com recommends

Has Lewis Hamilton’s ‘instinctive, unconscious speed’ left him?

Damon Hill casts doubt on Max Verstappen future: ‘He’s not having fun’

Lewis Hamilton era declared ‘over’ with Abu Dhabi the ‘great tipping point’

That’s because he started from the pit lane after Red Bull changed parts of his RB19 and also the set-up after his qualifying off. And despite hustling his car around the circuit, and benefitting from the field bunching up not once but twice, Perez still could only recover to fifth place.

Horner says that shows the team is not sandbagging, although he did concede there was some race management from Verstappen’s side.

“There’s always an element of managing that goes on in any race,” said the Briton, “because it was a one-stop race, and a very early one-stop race, of course there was an element of tyre management which was going on, which was what they were doing.

“[But] Checo wasn’t hanging about; he wasn’t cruising around, holding back seven-tenths per lap because he didn’t want to show it – the grid was certainly a little bit closer at this venue.”

The RB19’s numbers around the Albert Park circuit

Around the Albert Park circuit the RB19 was the pick of the field, up on straight-line speed and also cornering.

According to Formu1a.uno’s calculations the RB19’s average cornering speed was 164km/h, that’s 0.89 percent faster than Aston Martin’s while on the straights it averaged 312.9 km/h, 0.5% faster than Ferrari.

And that’s not taking into account the DRS effect which rivals reckon could be worth two or three tenths on Red Bull’s already superior speed.

Altogether it meant a third pole position for the season for Red Bull, Verstappen clocking a 1:16.732 to beat Russell by 0.236s in Saturday’s qualifying.

He was only 0.179s ahead of Hamilton at the chequered flag on Sunday but that difference in meaningless given the circumstances under which the race ended.