Lewis Hamilton has caused a stir by suggesting Red Bull currently are not “at the same level” as Ferrari and his Mercedes team after a troubled start in 2018.
The Milton Keynes outfit had looked to make a faster start to this season after bringing forward the development of the RB14 compared to recent years, however, so far other factors have prevented the team from showing their potential.
There have been glimpses, such as Daniel Ricciardo’s fastest lap in Australia, but having yet to pose a major challenge to the top two teams, the world champion admits he was expecting more.
“The team has the potential to win races,” Hamilton said on Thursday.
“In testing, they looked a lot faster than they have done in the last two races but so far they are not operating on the same level as Ferrari or Mercedes. Ferrari has almost been flawless, and we are working on being flawless.”
On Saturday, another example of the problems Red Bull face emerged as Ricciardo suffered another engine failure in final practice ahead of qualifying but on Friday, the 28-year-old had been upbeat about race expectations.
“The race setup is better than the qualifying setup and with the Soft and the Medium [tyres] we’re more competitive,” he said after complaining about “killing” the Ultrasoft in the first sector of a flying lap.
“The long runs were more competitive. We’ll improve a few things and hopefully we’re there tomorrow and more importantly on Sunday.”
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Hamilton would continue his comments by focusing more on the battle with Ferrari and admitted he was a little frustrated to have lost out to Sebastian Vettel at the first two races.
“I don’t feel that Ferrari did a better job in Australia, that would be unfair to say because we outperformed them all weekend, it was just one little thing that tipped it over and sometimes you get lucky,” he said.
“The next race they did the job, but they didn’t do the whole job, it was only on one car [that finished ahead]. The full package is getting a one-two, and neither of us have done that.
“You can’t say they are perfect and neither are we, but it is very close between us and it’s going to be interesting to see how we perform from track to track.”