Marko expresses his view on Red Bull updates amid Perez's early SQ2 exit

Helmut Marko is feeling positive after the first day of action during the United States Grand Prix weekend. The external Red Bull Racing advisor reports the upgrades performed well. Verstappen will start the sprint from pole, but Perez will start from 11th place.

With the weekend in the United States being a sprint weekend, the teams only had one free practice session to set everything up properly for sprint qualifying later in the day. "After [practice] we were confident that we would be at the front over a single lap," the Red Bull consultant told ServusTV.

"But we actually expected Ferrari to be the opponents," Marko said. This turned out not to be the case. George Russell qualified in second place and Charles Leclerc only in third. Carlos Sainz starts from fifth place.

The Austrian finds it difficult to make a prediction for the sprint race as there are no comparable times from the only free practice. He is very happy with the performance of the updated RB20 so far. "This is a very good start. The new parts on the car worked immediately, which is not obvious with only one practice," Marko said.