Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has blamed a fundamental cooling problem for Ferrari’s poor pace at the Australian Grand Prix.
Having led pre-season testing, the Scuderia fell way short of expectations at the season opener. In fact, they ended the weekend as the third best team with Max Verstappen claiming third behind the two Mercedes’.
Though most believe the unique characteristics of Melbourne was a key factor, Marko believes more fundamental issues could be at play which could impact Ferrari in Bahrain too.
“It’s quite clear that Ferrari has underperformed and also [their customer team] Haas,” he told Autosport.
“We don’t know exactly, but I think they just cut back on performance because they had cooling problems.
“One indication is that [Charles] Leclerc was faster with the white [hard] tyres than Vettel with the yellow [medium] ones,” Marko suggested.
“This means that something was wrong because Vettel only drove three halfway fast laps and then his pace dropped.”
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The Red Bull chief’s claim does tie in with speculation of overheating issues with the Ferrari engine, which is resulting in them having to turn down the power.
To make the situation worse, it is understood that the advantage the Italian team had with their power unit last year has also been reigned in.
“The FIA reacted very well and closed several loopholes, or at least minimised them,” he stated.
“This means that these speed peaks, which Ferrari had on the last 25% or 30% of the straights, no longer exist and that’s good.”
Ferrari has claimed fixes are now in place for Bahrain and they should be back close to the potential they showed in Barcelona.
However, turning his attention to Red Bull, Marko also says there is plenty of room for improvement too.
“The engine ran smoothly from day one until the race. Also the adaptation, drivability and all that [was good],” he revealed to Autosport.
“In terms of the chassis, we still had deficits because we never drove with the full package in Barcelona after Gasly destroyed essential parts that we only had one of [at that stage when he crashed].
“We let ourselves be irritated and we went much too far in the hard direction with the set-up,” Marko added.
“We’re also far from at the optimum of what the chassis can do, but that’s nothing that can’t be repaired in a very short timeframe.”
All of this means Marko downplays the final result from Australia.
“Maybe Mercedes doesn’t even know why they were so far ahead in Melbourne,” he said.
“Let’s call it ‘Melbourne effect’ as the track temperature was between 40 and 44 degrees, that’s 15 degrees more than in Barcelona.
“I think we’ll only see the exact balance of power on the upcoming circuits, which have more significance, like Bahrain and China.”