Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies does not yet understand why his two drivers, Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, are experiencing a more difficult race weekend in Shanghai than in Melbourne. In Australia, Hadjar was still able to qualify third, while a week later there was no more than an eighth starting position for Verstappen. ‘We must fully understand why it has been more difficult for us this weekend than in Melbourne’, Mekies concludes.
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The Red Bull drivers, Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, were almost a second slower than polesitter Andrea Kimi Antonelli. This gave the two an eighth and ninth starting position respectively, behind the three other top teams and the Alpine of Pierre Gasly. Both Verstappen and Hadjar have already stated that everything Red Bull tries to turn the tide has so far come to nothing.
“It has certainly been a difficult weekend so far and it already started laboriously yesterday during free practice,” says team principal Laurent Mekies to Verstappen.com. “From the first laps we couldn’t find the same feeling with the car as last week in Melbourne, so that was a bit of a struggle. Max, Isack and the whole team have worked very hard to reduce the gap to the competition and get a better feeling with the car again. We have made a little progress in closing the performance gap, but of course it is not enough and not something we can be satisfied with.”
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Red Bull’s dip in form still a mystery
Red Bull’s larger gap to the other top teams – Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren – is striking, because Hadjar still qualified third in Melbourne. This is also still a mystery to Mekies, the Frenchman honestly admits. “The most important thing is that during the race tomorrow we fully understand why it has been more difficult for us this weekend than in Melbourne,” Mekies sighs. “In any case, we will be able to learn a huge amount during tomorrow’s race. As we saw in Melbourne and during the sprint this morning, there will be no lack of action on the track and we will work hard to seize every opportunity that comes our way.”
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