Auto Motor Und Sport: Red Bull destroys its opponents. Beyond that there is more light than shadow. Ferrari and Mercedes are further behind than last year and seem at a loss as to how to build on old mistakes.
With Ferrari and Mercedes you have to wonder what happened over the winter. Instead of making up ground on Red Bull they lost ground. Ferrari 4 tenths, Mercedes two. And somehow you can't shake the feeling that neither of them knows what makes Red Bull so fast and how to catch up
Mercedes and Ferrari are at the minimum weight. But also Red Bull. Mercedes and Ferrari have equalized Red Bull's top speed advantage but lose in the corners. Mercedes in the fast ones, Ferrari in the slow ones. Mercedes and Ferrari no longer bounce. Red Bull never had it.
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The W14 obviously lacks downforce in the rear. This robs drivers of confidence in fast corners and kills traction. The drivers can transfer that to one lap. Not in the long run. Mercedes presented itself better over one lap than over the distance.
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Ferrari lack powertrain reliability, although this time the problem seems to have been with the battery rather than the engine. But Charles Leclerc already has two energy storage devices in the pool. Starting place penalties are looming on the horizon again.
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Ferrari couldn't get rid of the heavy tire wear. Verstappen took 24 seconds off Leclerc before he failed. The Dutchman started the race with two sets of used tyres, Leclerc with three fresh ones.
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At Mercedes and Ferrari, the crisis council met immediately after the race. Bahrain's particularly tail-heavy course may have exacerbated its own shortcomings and Red Bull's strengths, but one would be fooling....
[....] oneself to hope that the picture at Jeddah's high-speed circuit changes dramatically. The gaps may decrease, but the trend will remain.
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Red Bull's former rivals need solutions and they need them fast. Otherwise the championship train will have left before it really gets going.
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Mercedes is talking about a change of concept, has two answers up its sleeve, and wanted to decide which way to go in the week after Bahrain. But are they enough to catch up with Red Bull?
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According to the team, they have achieved their goals with the current car, but they were obviously set too low. Doubts arise as to whether the alternatives were higher and therefore high enough.
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Frédéric Vasseur could only administer tranquilizers after the disappointing start to the season. You have a car that could have finished on pole. You had that in 2022 too. Fresh tires cover up some weaknesses. In Vasseur's experience, it couldn't be rocket science to teach a....
[...] basically fast car to run continuously. The problems lie more in the set-up than in the genes of the car. An engineer said that the drivers should also contribute to the solution.
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Ferrari could fall flat on its face with this approach. The disease of high tire wear afflicted the red cars in the second half of last year.
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According to Jock Clear, Red Bull improved the car so much last year that Leclerc and Sainz were forced to up the pace accordingly in the race. And that killed the tires. Only at the end of the year would they have learned how to caress the tires.
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But none of that helps if the tire caresser Verstappen is still faster than the tire caresser Leclerc because the car offers him better opportunities. Vasseur had to admit that Red Bull's soft-soft-hard tire sequence could never have been driven. Ferrari needed hard twice.
READ THE FULL STORY BY MICHAEL SCHMIDT HERE auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/gp-ba…
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