Red Bull sticks to its plan – Helmut Marko
Red Bull is on course to launch its car earlier than usual. The harsh deadlines for the engineers set for the team’s 2018 car seem to work and secure that the four-time world champion squad gets its new challenger ready for the first tests without the usual trepidation.
There are four weeks left before the Moving Circus gets together for the first time in 2018 to try the new generation cars out on the Montmelo circuit near Barcelona. This time of the year has often been a scathing race against the clock in Milton Keynes as the Adrian Newey-led technical team usually finalized the new car after the last moment.
Red Bull’s director of motorsport Helmut Marko said that the team changed its plan for the new season to avoid any hurry-scurry.
“Building on our experiences from the previous years, we gave strict deadlines to our engineers. There is no fear this time that we will not be ready for the first test.”
“Toro Rosso is usually a step in front of Red Bull in building the car. By the time Toro Rosso is already producing the car, Red Bull has not even finalized its design.”
Marko is confident that Red Bull can find itself back on winning ways after a rather moderate season. The Austrian firm’s F1 team won two races last season, but had a very difficult start into the year after it found out during the first test sessions that the correlation between the aerodynamic measurements and the on-track datas was not in harmony.
„We have optimal datas. However, I always concede: we have those in every single year,” Marko referred to the development work of the new car which is running smoothly.
Red Bull’s star designer Adrian Newey who won world champion titles with McLaren, Williams and with his actual employer is more involved in this year project that he was in the previous year. The 1971 Le Mans-winner said that Newey’s focus is not devoted fully to the F1 project of the company, but he is much more of a part of process.
Speaking of the marriage between Toro Rosso and its new engine supplier Honda, Marko sounded positively surprised. The Austrian said that Honda seems to have made serious progress over the last months.
„Honda has been active and have already found anything. They could be on the same level as Renault with their second power unit. Honda had to make many sacrifices due to the chassis of McLaren. They could not develop freely and were limited,” concluded the former race driver.
