Marko reviews strong McLaren testing: 'They were clearly superior'

Helmut Marko, like Max Verstappen, thinks McLaren is the favourite at the start of the new Formula 1 season. Despite this, Red Bull Racing's advisor believes his team has one factor that will make a big difference: Max Verstappen.

Speaking to Formel1.de, Marko said, "McLaren was clearly superior [during the test days]. They were in the short run, they just hid that. They went driving and they drove the best first sector, the best second sector and then they went back into the pit lane. They also tried to hide their real potential during the longruns, when they had to drive with a full tank."

Red Bull Racing's adviser continued, "If they then drove with 10kg less petrol, for example, they might have gone three tenths faster. But the longrun is a comparison of how much petrol they were driving with, while they were half a second faster and still not leading in the top speed measurements. This suggests they were not driving with full engine power. So if this is the result in Australia, they are clearly No 1 and No 2."

Marko then went on to share how the different set-ups gave Red Bull mixed results in Bahrain. Although he said that Verstappen's long run looked good and was still competitive, Marko did state that when Liam Lawson was behind the wheel of the RB21, the sessions went a little less smoothly due to a different set-up that was tried and somewhat less successful.

He is therefore still confident of a good season, with the Austrian pointing to an important factor within the team, "What we have is the Max-factor. That can still make impossible things possible."

This article has been created in collaboration with Cas van de Kleut.