Peter Sauber: “Red Bull without rival in F1”
The boss of the Swiss team Sauber says out loud what many team principals think quietly: the Red Bull RB7 currently has no equivalent that can match it.
Initially very reserved, Peter Sauber played the spokesperson for the entire paddock by admitting that the new Red Bull has no rival.
Mixed reviews
However, his judgment is not unanimous in the press. Recently, la Gazzetta dello Sport published a statistical survey according to which Ferrari is the leading force on the grid with the best time average. Red Bull is only third behind Mercedes, reinforcing the observers’ thesis that the Austrian team has often and deliberately hidden its game.
According to the ranking of the Italian newspaper, McLaren is neck and neck with Lotus Renault and Toro Rosso, with an advantage of just a tenth over Williams.
No rush
“We completed many laps without encountering a single reliability issue,” claimed Sebastian Vettel to the Spanish newspaper AS. “When we pay attention to it, our top speed seems quite good, but I think we will have to wait for Melbourne, Malaysia, or even China to see where we really stand.”
Under pressure from a journalist asking him once again if the RB7 is a machine capable of winning, Vettel replied: “How can one answer without even having raced a single race?”.
However, according to some engineers present in Barcelona, the Red Bull would be six-tenths faster than its closest rival, the Ferrari F150° Italia.
