Red Bull team advisor Helmut Marko recently admitted in an interview that given the stability at Mercedes, they expect a greater threat from the Silver Arrows in the 2023 season, compared to Ferrari. The Scuderia kicked off the 2022 season on a strong note and became the season favorites from the first race in Bahrain.
However, they slowly lost momentum and essentially handed over the championship title to Red Bull. Ferrari are undergoing yet another leadership change. Now that Sauber’s Frederic Vasseur will be stepping into Mattia Binotto’s role as the team boss, Marko expects even greater struggles ahead for the Prancing Horse.
Apart from this, the Austrian admitted that Lewis Hamilton continues to remain a threat to Red Bull, despite the underwhelming season that the Briton had in 2022.
When asked by Auto Motor und Sport whether the team fears Mercedes or Ferrari more in the upcoming season, Marko gave a clear answer:
“Definitely Mercedes. As we said at the beginning, they are the more stable squad. And they have Hamilton. Even if it may have gone down this year. It’s a very special number. In the meantime, his lap times have repeatedly shown that he is a top man. It’s just the much stronger package than Ferrari.”
Mercedes’ era of domination came to quite an abrupt end this season with the new regulations creating plenty of struggles for the team with porpoising issues and the overall pace of the car. The team only manages to secure a single race win this season, while Lewis Hamilton broke his streak of having one race in every season he has participated in.
Still, Red Bull remain weary of their 2021 rivals, who managed to put on quite the fight last year with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton battling it out race after race.
Mattia Binotto was “simply overwhelmed by the task” in 2022, says Red Bull advisor
Despite all the criticism that Ferrari’s now former boss Mattia Binotto received for the team’s rather unsuccessful campaign in 2022, Helmut Marko stands by the Italian.
Marko admitted that while he understood that Binotto was “overwhelmed” by the job of taking Ferrari back to their championship-winning days, the 53-year-old is an “excellent technician and politician”.
Describing this change in leadership as a “weakening for Ferrari”, Marko said:
“In the case of Ferrari, I don’t quite understand the change. I consider Binotto to be an excellent technician and politician. He was simply overwhelmed by the task. But it would have been enough to put a sporting director at his side to support him at the track and with the strategy. With the new man, who has many other jobs, I see a weakening for Ferrari.”
Red Bull secured their fifth constructors’ championship title at the 2022 US Grand Prix, while Ferrari and Mercedes finished second and third respectively.
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Edited by Akshay Saraswat
