Red Bull Racing eye up ‘sharp’ Mercedes AMG – Formula 1 news
Red Bull Racing team owner, Dietrich Mateschitz expects that one more team other than the typical rivals, McLaren and Ferrari can emerge as a strong contender in the forthcoming 2012 F1 season setting off at Albert Park in Melbourne on March 18, 2012.
Mateschitz expressed in an Austrian newspaper Kurier that Mercedes AMG Petronas have made many good improvements and some significant developments in their new car W03 for the season ahead.
Moreover, he believed that Mercedes had proved out be quite sharp after its recent uncovering regarding the use of DRS along with the novel and legal F-duct solution to boost up pace substantially.
Red Bull had been considered as the front-runner for the upcoming championship regardless of the issues faced during the last day of the final test held at Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona.
Nonetheless, Mercedes had quite a reliable pre-season testing programme this year as compared to the preceding year in which they could hardly be able to test run their car before the first race.
In addition, Dr. Helmut Marko of the Red Bull had agreed that the concept of Mercedes was ‘shrewd’. He also said that they were left with no time to install the system similar to the Brackley-based team in RB8 before the season opener.
Furthermore, three-time world champion Niki Lauda stated that he believed Red Bull and McLaren were in the same position. However, he was not sure about Mercedes but he thought that they had also came out well for the approaching season.
“I think the McLaren and the Red Bull cars are on par. Mercedes is the big question mark — I think they are also really fast,” said Niki Lauda.
It would be quite interesting to mention that Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn had been crowned as the ‘Bluff champion’ for the upcoming season by a newspaper.
“Formula One is just so complex that we simply don’t know much about how the other teams are going. Clearly, the W03 is a step forward,” he told Bild-Zeitung. “The question is how big our step has been compared to the others. We really need to wait until
the first race.”
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