Marko relieved after first test week: 'We are in the frontrunners'

For Red Bull Racing, this week was an exciting one. Like the other teams, they worked hard over the winter to get the new car ready for the season, but due to the many changes in the regulations, none of the teams knew if they had done a good job. After the first week of testing, however, Helmut Marko breathed a sigh of relief.

Red Bull's top man sees that the speed is right there with his team. "I believe we are among the frontrunners," he revealed to Motorsport-Magazin.com. On Wednesday Max Verstappen managed to set almost 150 laps, on Thursday Sergio Perez stalled and lost a lot of valuable time due to repairs. On Friday, however, they were back in full force and the day passed without major problems.

Red Bull has yet to solve problems

Last year Mercedes were Red Bull's big challenger and they were clearly a class apart from the rest of the field. This year seems to be completely different, Marko also expects.

"Ferrari seems to be looking very strong and also McLaren has shown speed." He does add a note here that the teams only see the data among themselves in lap times.

It is likely that Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull have not yet shown their true potential. More will become clear towards the second test week in Bahrain. For Red Bull it is then especially important that they have solved the current problems they are experiencing. Marko said that the RB18 is still a bit too heavy, so that updates in Bahrain should solve that problem.