Red Bulls Helmut Marko believes that Ferrari was not able to go at full pace in Australia due to a cooling issue. Many had picked Ferrari to go into the 2019 season as the fastest team but the Italian team were underwhelming. It is thought that Ferrari will up the pace in Bahrain and threaten both Red Bull and Mercedes.
Ferrari looked like the fastest team in winter testing but things were not quite right in Australia. Red Bull managed to finish on the podium but will be cautiously looking behind them to see where Ferrari are this weekend.
Speaking after the Australian Grand Prix Marko told Autosport: "It's quite clear that Ferrari has underperformed. And also Haas.
"We don't know exactly, but I think they just cut back on performance because they had cooling problems.
"The Haas was suddenly slower in relation [to the rest of the field compared to its long-run pace in pre-season testing]."
"One indication is that [Charles] Leclerc was faster with the white tyres [hards] than Vettel with the yellow ones [mediums]," said Marko.
"This means that something was wrong.
"Vettel only drove three halfway fast laps and then his pace dropped.
"Ferrari was no danger on the yellow tyre due to the temperature and their tyre degradation.
"We, on the other hand, did not have any issues with degradation and were not even on the limit."