The question of the first pursuer is difficult to answer. Red Bull did not let his pants down like in the test drives. Max Verstappen completely relinquished a racing simulation, and Pierre Gasly is currently not an opponent for the top people of the competition. The Frenchman also lost some time due to a sensor error. The Honda engine on the car of the French but contrary to first fears got nothing.
"We had difficulties with the setup," sports director Helmut Marko admits. "If we made the car faster in two corners, it got worse in two other corners." The Red Bull engineers therefore decided to declare the second training test drive. It was more important to find a good balance, so check how much the tires break down. "We saw on Gasly that we are doing well."
Verstappen tried several voting options on the RB15. His car was refueled again and again because of the better comparability between the individual test rounds. The Dutchman never had a free round, so that the eight-tenths do not correspond to the true backlog. "But even if everything went well, we'd still be half a second behind," Marko admits. One of the top speeds and acceleration values already indicates. Honda has massively caught up with Ferrari and Mercedes.
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