Marko: "We're on the same level as Bottas but Hamilton is too quick"

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing advisor Dr Helmut Marko has explained how his team have a relatively small chance to be able to fight the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton at the top of the grid, with the Austrian saying the gap in race pace with the reigning champion is too big to bridge.

Red Bull experimented quite a lot with set-ups on Friday in Suzuka, running low-downforce and building from there, winning time as FP2 progressed.

Even though engine partner Honda targeted this weekend to get a big result in front of their home fans, Marko thinks the pace is not quite there to compete with the likes of Hamilton, who finished both sessions in second place, with Max Verstappen getting P3 in FP2.

"We started the weekend the right way this time," the 76-year-old told Auto Motor und Sport when discussing Friday.

"However, we were trying too many things with setup, we should've focussed more on gathering data to close the gap to Mercedes."

Marko added that one Mercedes in particular was too quick in terms of race pace, and that is the #44 car of Hamilton.

"We're on the same level as Bottas, but Hamilton is too quick for us," he concluded.