Christian Horner, Red Bull Formula 1 boss, brushes off suggestions from George Russell that the team is downplaying its true potential.
At Melbourne, Russell claimed that the championship leading team is “holding back”. He claims the team has more potential than what has been on display. He argues that RB is downplaying its full pace in a bid to control reactions from rival teams.
Red Bull is dominating the start of the season, with winning all three races held so far. Additionally, the pair also managed to win top two positions in first two races.
In the Australian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen stayed ahead of Lewis Hamilton with 10-12 seconds gap. However, his team-mate jumped to fifth place at the end of race while starting from pitlane.
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“For sure they’re holding back,” Russell told BBC 5 Live in Melbourne. “They’re almost embarrassed to show their full potential. Because the faster they seem globally the more the sport is going to try to hold them back somehow.
“I think, realistically, they probably have seven-tenths advantage over the rest of the field. Max has got no reason to be pushing it, nor has Red Bull.
“They have done a really great job, we can’t take that away, and we clearly have to up our game.”
Horner wished the comments of young Brit were true. However, he asserted that the tyre management in Melbourne helped the team to perform well. Both Red Bull drivers switched early to newer tyres like its rival which helped the team.
“That’s very generous of him,” he commented on Russell’s claims. “I mean, his team would know all too well about those kinds of advantages.
“There’s always an element of managing that goes on in any race. You could see because it was a one-stop race and a very early one-stop race, there was an element of tyre management that was going on, which is what they were doing.
“Checo wasn’t hanging about, he wasn’t cruising round holding back seven tenths a lap because he didn’t want to show it. The grid was certainly a little bit closer at this venue.”
Additionally, he weighed on Melbourne form: “We’ve obviously weighted the car towards the race rather than qualifying. You can see perhaps the cars that warmed up their tyres more aggressively suffered a bit more in the race.”
