Marko draws favourable conclusion after seeing McLaren during sprint race

Despite Oscar Piastri pipping Verstappen to P2 in the sprint race at the Shanghai International Circuit, Helmut Marko was not really impressed with McLaren, and strips McLaren's 'unbeatable' label clean off.

McLaren disappointed Marko quite a lot. "Yes, they couldn't match Ferrari. There was no speed, with Norris too. That whole race was very strange. From what I heard on the radio, Norris was complaining that he had no grip. In any case, it shows McLaren is not unbeatable. At Ferrari, Leclerc was actually also driving on the carcass [the tyre], only he was still very fast," Marko said in conversation with the Dutch branch Motorsport.com.

Marko was asked if P3 was the highest possible for Verstappen. "I would say yes, yes. Around the seventh lap, it looked like Ferrari would actually get into trouble, but they recovered and unfortunately after that the tyres went off on Max quite quickly.

"The crazy thing is that on the last lap his tyres improved a bit again and then suddenly he went eight tenths faster than before. Very crazy," Marko concluded.