Red Bull: No reason to think Mercedes won’t be right there this season
2J9D7WC VERSTAPPEN Max (ned), Red Bull Racing RB18, portrait RUSSELL George (gbr), Mercedes AMG F1 Team W13, portrait during the Formula 1 Pirelli Grand Premio de Espana 2022, 6th round of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship, on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, from May 20 to 22, 2022 in Montmelo, Spain - Photo DPPI
Christian Horner believes Mercedes’ late-season gains in 2022 are a sign they’ll be “competitive” against Red Bull this season.
Red Bull romped to the championship double last season, easily seeing off an early-season challenge from Ferrari while Mercedes weren’t even in the mix.
The Brackley squad’s run of Constructors’ Championship titles ended with a distant P3 as their W13 bounced from one track to another in the opening part of the season.
That meant rather than focusing on gaining performance, Mercedes were left scrambling for ways to curtail the bouncing.
It was only after they’d resolved the porpoising that the team could begin to develop the W13, Mercedes making bigger gains than any other team in the second part of the championship.
They went from fighting to score solid points to winning the Sao Paulo Grand Prix with a 1-2 result.
This season Horner believes they’ll be more competitive than they were last year.
“Mercedes did a lot of development last year,” he explained to Auto Motor und Sport, “and you saw from where they started the year to where they finished they were much, much more competitive.
“They bought a lot of new parts particularly in the second half of the year.
“So we expect them to be competitive. They’ve got two very strong drivers so there’s no reason to think that they won’t be be right there.”
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‘Top three teams are well equipped driver wise’
Those two strong drivers for Mercedes are George Russell and seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton, the former claiming his maiden Formula 1 victory in Brazil.
But it’s not just the Mercedes line-up that Horner reckons Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez need to be aware of, there’s also Ferrari.
Although last year Ferrari’s challenge petered out in a mix of reliability issues and strategy blunders, both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz recorded victories.
“I think we’ve got a great driver pairing,” Horner said. “I think that if you look at Mercedes, they’ve also got a very strong driver pairing. Ferrari have strong driver pairing.
“So I think the top three teams are well equipped driver wise. It’s a question of working as a team collectively.”
Verstappen left with a ‘good first impression’ of the RB19
Red Bull put their 2023 car, the RB19, through its paces at Silverstone last week.
Although the team only unveiled their 2023 colours at their New York launch, the actual car hit the track a few days later in a surprise shakedown.
Verstappen was behind the wheel and declared so far, so good.
“I’ve just driven the RB19 for the first time,” he said. “It was a good first impression. Everything worked really well.
“Everything went really smooth, so that’s exactly what you want from a day like this and I am now of course very excited to go to Bahrain.”
Red Bull, along with their rival teams, will be in action at Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit on February 23 for the start of a three-day pre-season test.
The first race of the season takes place on March 5 in Bahrain.
