Gerhard Berger, a former Formula 1 driver and ex-head of the DTM touring car series, sees Red Bull Racing as the clear favorites for the coming season, although he does not rule out other teams for surprises.
Last autumn, after selling DTM shares to the German car club ADAC, Berger retired and is enjoying a well-deserved rest, but remains very interested in motorsport events. He will not miss the first race of the season and even flew to Bahrain in advance to attend the last test day before the season.
Of course he noted the excellent form of Max Verstappen and the Red Bull Racing team, but in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung he warned fans against jumping to conclusions.
“Red Bull are really ahead, they’ve done a great job and their car is very stable on track, so I consider them my favourites,” said Berger. – But for now, all this should be judged with caution. Even if the picture seems unequivocal, there is usually a danger that the potential of some other teams is overlooked.”
When asked if the differences of opinion between Max and his partner, Sergio Perez, could affect Red Bull Racing’s competitiveness, the Austrian answered categorically: “There are no differences of opinion, the team is definitely betting on Verstappen and Perez knows that too.”
Of course, Berger gave an assessment to other teams that this year might well claim victories and podiums, but at the same time he had certain reservations: “It seems that the Ferrari car is really capable of excellent speed in one fast lap, but on on the SF-23 the front tires wear out quite a bit. You have to share the efficiency of the car in qualifying and race mode, and if everything is okay with that, you can save rubber.
At Mercedes, it seems that they have been able to solve the problem with the longitudinal build of the car – it is clear that the team had to deal with this by the second year.
Aston Martin has done a great job and made an important step forward. It seems that they are well behind the top three teams or even at the same level as Mercedes. They have probably been able to make this progress because they now have a good engineer from Red Bull (Dan Fallows, Aston Martin’s CTO) on the team. In addition, I really appreciate Fernando Alonso’s abilities.
But McLaren is still lagging behind, judging by what we’ve seen in testing, they clearly don’t have enough pace, and Andreas Seidl’s departure as team leader doesn’t help solve any problems either.
Berger was once a co-owner of the Toro Rosso team and has always had close ties to Formula 1, but when asked if he had any desire to work in the World Championship again in some capacity, he said only: ” No, because I left DTM precisely to spend more time on the affairs of my company and my children.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
