Both Mercedes drivers called out Red Bull’s incredible pace with Lewis Hamilton stating he’s “never seen a car so fast” as the RB19.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit romped to a second consecutive one-two finish to start the season in Saudi Arabia, with Max Verstappen recovering from 15th on the grid to finish second with a little help from a Safety Car.
As part of his recovery through the field, the two-time world champion simply breezed past George Russell with DRS on the run to the final corner, leading Sky Sports commentator David Croft to describe the performance gap as F1 vs. F2.
It’s Martin’s “What” for me when Max passes George here
Red Bull really have built an absolute beast of a car pic.twitter.com/o9san8noDj
— Matt³³⁺¹⁶ | ??MELBOURNE?? (@FM1_3316) March 21, 2023
A sentiment Hamilton appears to agree with.
“I’ve never seen a car so fast,” Lewis declared post-race.
“When we were fast, we weren’t that fast. That’s the fastest car I’ve seen compared to the rest, I don’t know why or how but he came past me with serious speed.
“I didn’t even bother to block because there was a massive speed difference.”
Teammate George Russell actually praised Red Bull for their job with the RB19, but believes Mercedes, who are now set to overhaul the W14, can gain some ground.
“I mean, firstly, you’ve got to give credit to what Red Bull have done,” the Briton told Sky Sports.
“The gap they have to the rest of the field, I think is bigger than we’ve seen probably since Mercedes in 2014.
“You know, it’s a serious, serious gap, and I guess everybody needs to keep working harder to understand how to close that gap.”
On Mercedes, he added: “We know we didn’t make the right decisions over the winter and I think we can regain some of that performance quicker than you would do ordinarily, so everything’s not all lost.
“We’re still going to be fighting as hard as we can. We want to win races this year. We want to be in the championship hunt, but we’ve equally got to be realistic, focus on ourselves and just get the fundamentals right for the long term.”
Russell was at least buoyed by Mercedes finishing ahead of one key rival in Jeddah, particularly with the promise of big gains to come.
“We want to take the positives away from this weekend, we qualified ahead of Ferrari and one Aston,” he stated.
“The car is already capable of that at the moment, we finished ahead of both Ferraris on merit, we had better pace than them, and we know we’ve got a lot of performance in the pocket to come in the near future. So in that regard, things are looking good.
“But our goal isn’t just to beat Ferrari, our goal is to fight for championships and our fight wants to be with Red Bull and they’re a step ahead of everyone, so work to do.”