Adrian Newey: Red Bull need to step up in qualifying at 2012 Chinese Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
Adrian Newey, the chief technical officer of Red Bull Racing has said that they need to improve their performance in the qualifying of 2012 Chinese Grand Prix which is going to be held at Shanghai International Circuit this weekend.
“We have shown good race pace, but we know we need to make a step in qualifying,” said Newey.
Moreover, Newey said that they have planned to run two different specifications of RB8 in the free practice sessions on Friday so as to make the necessary evaluations of the updates.
“In order to evaluate our most recent upgrades, we will run two different specifications of the RB8 in China on Friday. Based on feedback and preference shown by both drivers, Mark will test an updated evolution of the set-up used for the Malaysian GP, while
Sebastian will run a pre-season specification. We will then compare the results,” he said.
Red Bull Racing have won the last two championship titles and completely dominated in the previous year after claiming 12 victories out of 19 races.
However, the defending champions struggled during the last day of the final pre-season test held at Circuit de Catalunya due to the upgrades made in the car and they could only manage to cover 23 laps while came last in the timesheets.
Afterwards, they faced problems during the qualifying of the first two races and have not been able to explore the true potential of their car until now.
Nevertheless, Red Bull have been making the best of the efforts to make the essential advancements and the substantial preparations for the season ahead.
Furthermore, Mark Webber who is currently standing at fourth place in the drivers’ championship has expressed that he is looking forward to secure a competitive finish in the third GP while he said that he has always enjoyed his driver in China.
“Shanghai is a track that has been pretty good to me in the past,” said Webber.
On the other hand, Sebastian Vettel, after being unable to score any points in the second race due to his collision with Narain Karthikeyan of HRT, is keeping his utmost focus on the next race.
Tags: