Marko happy with feedback Verstappen: "Felt pretty good"

Red Bull Racing looks back on a reasonably successful first week of testing. Only on Thursday some time was lost for Sergio Perez after problems with the gearbox, but the most important thing is that Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez are satisfied with the behavior of the RB18. Helmut Marko is a happy man.

Speaking to Auto, Motor und Sport Marko says: "We set our time on the C3 tires with a car that was certainly not the lightest." According to Red Bull's advisor, there was a relatively large amount of fuel in the tank, making Verstappen's 1:19.756 in the morning session a competitive time. George Russell may have been about half a second faster, but he was driving with the much softer C5 compound.

Feeling about RB18 is good

Verstappen himself said when he got out of the car that he doesn't look at the timesheets at all yet, but Marko secretly does a little bit. It satisfies the man from Graz, although there are still some teething problems that need to be fixed. "But Max said from the first lap that the car felt pretty good, " he said. That Red Bull has run into a few minor things is part of testing and nothing shocking, according to Marko.

It is especially important to do a lot of kilometers and Verstappen managed to do that. The reigning world champion completed 206 laps in a day and a half. Perez put 78 laps on the Thursday and at the time of writing Friday afternoon still has four hours to add a good number to that.