Marko sees Red Bull making wrong choice: 'Importance dratically overestimated'

Helmut Marko is not so happy with the course of the first day for Red Bull Racing. The Austrian team's advisor had hoped to build on the good form of last weekend's race at Spa-Francorchamps, but the conclusion after Friday is that Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez have a lot of work to do. More than was hoped for.

Based on the first two free practice sessions, it looks like the softs and mediums will be the main tyres used this weekend. Red Bull couldn't do it on those tyres, while it seemed to go well on the hard. Marko is honest with Austrian ORF in admitting that Red Bull made the wrong choice in preparation for the weekend.

"On hard tyres we were out in front and thought we were in a good position, but then we got the lid on it in second free practice. We drastically overestimated the importance of the hard tyres," says Marko. The degradation of the tyres is so low that we are unlikely to see the hard tyre in action in Sunday's race. "It looks like this tyre will not be used at all," he said.

Red Bull can still do better in race simulation

Whereas Red Bull are often good in the long runs and still need to find something in the qualifying runs after the first two practice sessions, this was reversed at Zandvoort."Over the single lap we were not bad, there were already changes (to the set-up). But the tyre wear was too high [in the longruns]. Russell's longrun looked impressive," said the Red Bull chief.