Marko With Worrying News For Red Bull Fans: 'Montreal Could Also Be Difficult Weekend'

Wednesday, 29 May 2024 at 14:00

Red Bull boss Helmut Marko isn't too optimistic ahead of the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix, as he confirmed his team's struggles.

Even though Red Bull is at the top of both Championship tables, the Austrian team's lead has decreased significantly over the last three weekends.

There are two main reasons. The first is that McLaren and Ferrari introduced effective upgrades, which allowed them to close the gap to the team from Milton Keynes.

The second is that Red Bull hasn't solved their problem with bumpy tracks since the last season. This became clear in the previous two races, both of which involved a lot of curb riding.

Red Bull's motorsport advisor, Helmut Marko, revealed after the Monaco Grand Prix that his team's computer simulations don't match reality, which is causing huge problems at the moment. He explained further in his column for Speedweek.com:

"The problem starts in the simulator, which indicated that the car was going over the curbs perfectly. Simply put, that means that the simulator and reality don't correlate."

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"And Monaco wasn't the first race track where we had this problem; it was the first time that it was relatively severe in Singapore. The simulator spat out something that didn't correspond to reality. That's the first point we'll address."

The 81-year-old suggested he believes his team can at least find why the simulator produces incorrect data. However, what might be worrying for Red Bull fans going into Canada is that Marko already warns it might be yet another "difficult weekend.

"We are optimistic that we can at least find out why the simulator produces data that does not correspond to reality. But Montreal could also be a difficult weekend for us."

The triple world champion won last year's edition of the Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal by 9.570 seconds, ahead of Fernando Alonso in second place.

However, Red Bull's overall pace advantage over its rivals was much more significant in 2023, which helped them mask some of their weaknesses.

Red Bull remains one of the favorites for the race win. However, we might be in for another exciting and unpredictable three-way battle between the Austrian team, Ferrari, and McLaren.