Max Verstappen has expressed his doubts that Red Bull Racing will be able to catch Ferrari and Mercedes by the end of 2017.
Max Verstappen expresses doubts that Red Bull will catch Mercedes and Ferrari
Going into this season, Red Bull was expected to be one of the front running teams on the grid due to the shakeup in aerodynamic regulations – an area that the Milton Keynes-based squad usually excel at. So far this season however, the team has failed to live up to expectations, leaving them as the third best team on the grid yet again.
Red Bull’s first half of 2017 has been a game of catching up to Mercedes and Ferrari, and the team has managed to get on top of its problems that it suffered from early on in the season. Verstappen is the driver who has suffered the most at the Red Bull team this year, retiring from five of the first 11 races while Daniel Ricciardo has secured four podium finishes and one win at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
While team boss Christian Horner believes that Red Bull will be able to outscore Ferrari in the final nine races this season, Verstappen doesn’t think that the RB13 will improve much more this year.
“For us, on tracks with not too many straights I think we are reasonably close, so I think around three-tenths down, more or less,” said Verstappen. “But then of course when you get a few straights in the track I think we’re a bit further away.
“I don’t know what to expect for the upcoming races but of course it will be quite tough for us to really compete against them. I expect in Spa Mercedes will be again very strong because in general their power unit is still the best in the whole field, but it’s very close,” he added.
“We’ll keep developing, but the other teams do [as well]; we have to make sure that we do it a little faster and of course better. I think from the engine side there is not much coming compared to the other teams where there is still development on both sides. So we have to make sure our car is definitely going in the right direction,” he explained.
Red Bull currently lie in third place in the Constructors’ Championship, 173 points behind Mercedes. Daniel Ricciardo leads Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship, 117 points to 67.
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