Helmut Marko: Leclerc starts to lose ground at the start

In Baku, Charles Leclerc retired for the second time in three races due to problems with the power plant. Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko predicts the Ferrari driver will soon be fined at the start for replacing the power plant, but this doesn’t mean Charles could be excluded from the title race.

Helmut Marko: “We want a fair fight. Now Leclerc gets a third engine, but before the end of the season he will have to change it one or two more times, which will inevitably lead to a loss of position at the start. But when we were 46 points behind in April, we were all written off, but there were still 20 races to go until the end of the season and I said nothing had been decided yet.

Ferrari had two technical meetings, we have the same number – we have a tie in this indicator. However, not only speed is important, but also stability, which can be seen from the example of Mercedes. George Russell isn’t that fast, but he’s stable, so he doesn’t lose a lot of points to us.”

Speaking of the Baku race, Marko noted the high speed of the RB18: “We are absolutely satisfied. The riders did a great job, but on the penultimate lap Max tried to scare us with problems with the brakes and then tried to show the best lap. We made three mistakes in the pit stops, which is not typical for us, but luckily this happened at those moments when the loss of time couldn’t hurt us.

In the early laps the focus was on getting Max ahead of Leclerc. When Leclerc went to the pits, everything became clear to us – if you’re in the lead in the race, you shouldn’t be the first to stop at the pit stop. We think we would have overtaken Ferrari even if they had no technical problems.”