Marko praises Alonso: 'Is in the shape of his life'

Fernando Alonso finished 38 seconds behind Max Verstappen, but Red Bull Racing believes the gap would have been smaller if the Spaniard made a better start in his AMR23. Helmut Marko told Austrian television station ServusTV afterwards.

"I think Alonso would have been even stronger if he had not started so far back," said Marko, who enjoyed the duel between the Aston Martin driver and Lewis Hamilton at the Bahrain International Circuit. "That was a lovely fight with Hamilton, by the way. It was a hard but fair duel. Really old-school. But of course, that took time and also tyres."

"That means that if he had been right behind us, the challenge would have been greater. I don't know how much further development there will be, but age doesn't seem to matter. He's in the form of his life," the Red Bull chief spoke in praise of the two-time world champion.

What the Red Bull Racing adviser forgets to add, however, is that Verstappen obviously did not have to make the most of it either. The 25-year-old driver had a lot left, but was not allowed to push too much by his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.