Helmut Marko: Lando Norris is our main rival

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko wrote a column following the Spanish Grand Prix, in which he named Lando Norris and McLaren as the main rivals in the battle for the title.

In Spain, Max Verstappen did not have the fastest car and did not start from pole, but still managed to take victory thanks to an incredible overtaking maneuver by George Russell on lap three. This allowed Max to ride at the front and once again show how well he can read the race. This formed the basis of his victory.

McLaren had the fastest car. On Friday it turned out again that our car has balance problems and we have to find a solution for qualifying that will make it competitive.

On Friday we saw in a long series of laps that McLaren was much faster than us. We can say that McLaren now has a car that works effectively with any rubber compound on any track almost from the start of the weekend.

But Max changed the situation: he won in a car that was not the fastest. He started on worn-out tyres, while Lando Norris started on fresh ones. At the start, Lando pushed Max onto the grass in a manoeuvre that proved to be more than controversial.

Lando opened the route for George Russell, who took full advantage of the situation on the relatively long straight before the first corner and took the lead. I think if Lando had stayed in the lead at the start we wouldn’t have won the race, but Norris dropped to third after the first corner behind Russell and Max.

On the third lap Max was as close to the DRS zone behind Russell as possible, the tyres were still in optimum condition and the battery was fully charged. All this allowed him to overtake George – and he did it with incredible determination. A very skillful manoeuvre.

Our strategy was optimal. It was clear that if the race was to go according to the usual scenario, it was necessary to implement the two-pit-stop strategy. For Sergio Perez, we changed the strategy, but he had completely different tire wear because he was stuck behind Nico Hulkenberg for a long time.

The most important thing was to stay in front and not get caught in traffic after the pit stops. We managed that, although Max was at a disadvantage because he was on worse tyres than Norris. But Lando never got close to the DRS zone and we kept an eye on the gap, which became the basis for decisions on race pace and pit stops.

The tyre change also went very well. I can’t remember the last time we missed a pit stop. Special credit goes to Jonathan Wheatley and his team of mechanics. Hannah Schmitz also deserves credit for always making clear strategic decisions.

A new test awaits us in Spielberg. Max always has a chance to win, but there is a sprint weekend coming up, which means we only have one practice session to fine-tune the car. In the end we always needed all three sessions to get the car in optimal condition. If the problem persists, it can make our lives more difficult.

Last year, McLaren was revived at the Red Bull Ring, where they introduced effective new products and have made rapid progress since then. However, Max controls almost flawlessly and Lando doesn’t know how to do this yet, but he remains our main rival. Therefore, I hope that Mercedes will improve and become the second strongest team in the championship for some time, which will help us in the fight for the title.

By finishing eighth, Sergio Perez achieved what could have been achieved if he started from eleventh position. His greatest strength is his ability to protect his tires, but he was unable to use this because he was driving in traffic. When you are tenth you can no longer take care of your tires; you have to give all your strength to regain positions. Moreover, we no longer have the superiority we had last year by three to four tenths.

The new RB rear wing did not work properly so the old one had to be used. The team will try to solve the problems in Spielberg, but it is not yet known whether the wing was the reason that the new products did not work. The drivers were busy fighting with their own cars and had no chance to earn points.