Lewis Hamilton is impressed by Red Bull’s performance in last weekend’s pre-season tests. He emphasizes that the Austrian formation will be a completely different team than before.
Red Bull seems to have made the best impression during the pre-season tests in Bahrain, which has also not escaped world champion Lewis Hamilton. Max Verstappen finished the test with a fastest time and, like his new teammate, Sergio Perez, managed to link that to a large number of kilometers.
“They look strong,” said Hamilton. “They have had a really good test session.”
“They’re going to be a different machine or beast this year with, I think, a really good, strong line-up and a really good car.”
“When you see how they won the last race last year, you can only assume that they will be competitive right from the first race, or at least in the front ranks. It will be a nice, long battle with them and that throughout the year. ”
In contrast to Red Bull, Mercedes has had a fairly problematic test session in Bahrain, both in terms of reliability and speed. Only during the last day the W12 with Valtteri Bottas behind the wheel also surfaced somewhat.
“At the moment it is difficult to say where we are and where the other teams are,” said the Finn.
“Of course we don’t know what their (Red Bull) program is like, what engines they use and how much fuel they use – but I have a feeling it will be close. That’s all I can say. ”
“I feel that we have recovered quite a bit. I cannot say that we have completely achieved the kilometers we wanted to make for the three days, but we are actually not that far off. ”
“We achieved 95% on Saturday and 100% on Sunday. We had a really solid day with a good number of laps and quality tests, so bearing in mind what happened on day one, I’m happy with how days two and three went. ”
“But now it’s time to somehow translate that data into performance over the next two weeks before the first race,” Bottas concluded.
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