Major update pushes from Red Bull’s rivals have appeared to lift teams like McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes ever closer to F1’s benchmark squad.
This seemed especially true in the sprint shootout qualifying at the United States Grand Prix where the top four teams were covered by just more than one tenth of a second.
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But with world champion Max Verstappen converting his pole position advantage of 0.055s into a crushing win of 9.4s over Lewis Hamilton, the long-run performance swing has delivered a reality check to rivals.
Stella, whose driver Lando Norris starts from the front row for the US GP on Sunday, thinks that the evidence of the sprint race sessions makes it clear that Red Bull’s true advantage over the opposition is not exposed.
“We have seen that when some of the cars get some grip from the soft tyres, certainly McLaren, we can almost close the gap to Red Bull – like in a Q3 session or the sprint shootout Q3,” explained Stella.
“But I think it was apparent already, even in the shootout on medium [tyres], that they had this advantage.
“Then, in the races, as soon as the tyres degrade and you have less grip available, you see that they can extract the real advantage from their car.”
Source: Autosport