Albers sees decisive factor at Red Bull: 'McLaren doesn't have that'

During the sprint race in Qatar, Max Verstappen couldn't keep up with the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, only to go on an win the Qatar Grand Prix the following day with ease. Christijan Albers, former F1 driver and team boss, sees a quality in the Red Bull Racing team that the rest of the grid lack, which enabled Verstappen to take an unexpected win.

Albers has noticed that Red Bull are ironclad in analysing and fine-tuning the car. "You really saw that this weekend, that in the sprint race you sacrifice someone (Perez, ed.) and then you can come back like that," Albers told the Telegraaf podcast. "And it's also a bit of luck. You have to start somewhere, because you have a hundred ideas to see if it gets faster. You can only choose a few."

According to the current analyst, good tuning and fine-tuning is a quality McLaren lacks. "You don't see them developing through a weekend like that. The speed doesn't come in," said Albers, who feared that after the departure of Adrian Newey at Red Bull, the Austrians would also become less good at this. "But still they did it on their own."

All in all, Albers' conclusion is: "In terms of engineer level, I think they are one of the best teams. I think the best. They have engineers who can really get the most out of the car in terms of setup. Only, they have to have the time and that is not always there."

This article was written in collaboration with Ludo van Denderen.

Want more Formula 1? Then follow GPblog on our various social media channels!

X | Instagram | Tiktok | YouTube