Hughes: "This is why the Monaco circuit favours Red Bull"

The Monaco GP is coming up this weekend, a Grand Prix that many people have been looking forward to for a while. After all, it has been two years since the last race there. There have been rumours for some time now that the circuit could be in Red Bull's favour. Mark Hughes thinks that the circuit is even made for the car of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.

This he says in his column on the site of Sky Sports. "Now we go to Monaco where tyre deg and drag are almost irrelevant. It's all about how much downforce can be loaded onto the car, low-speed downforce especially, with no considerations needed for high-speed aero. Based on what we've seen so far, that suggests a Red Bull track", said the Brit. Hughes then immediately comes up with a but.

Mercedes made faster by slow corners?

According to Hughes, the Portuguese GP showed that. And he sees a pattern emerging in this. "Portimao showed an interesting pattern in that the Mercedes was actually quicker through the slow corners but as much as 10kph slower through the fast ones. This wasn't necessarily because Mercedes had suddenly found a lot of front end grip, but could simply be about where the differing optimum set-up was for the two cars. If the Red Bull could find more lap time from a set up that more fully exploited its high-speed grip, then the set up would favour that even at the expense of slow corner performance." If this trend were to continue in Monaco, the battle between Red Bull and Mercedes on the street circuit could yet become hugely exciting.