Are Alonso and Hamilton Red Bull’s main rivals?
If the Red Bull team comfortably occupies the top of the constructors' standings, it considers Fernando Alonso, leader of the drivers' standings, a formidable rival, even though everyone is cautious not to dismiss McLaren and Lewis Hamilton too quickly.
After marking its territory in Valencia with a thoroughly revised RB8 (see our article on Red Bull’s exhausts), Red Bull solidified its lead in the Constructors’ Championship thanks to Mark Webber’s victory at the British Grand Prix and Sebastian Vettel’s third place. In the Drivers’ Championship, the Red Bull drivers are in second and third positions, both with over 100 points, but 13 and 29 points behind surprise championship leader Fernando Alonso, respectively.
Naturally, for the men of Milton Keynes, the Spaniard is considered the number one rival even if no one is ruling out McLaren and particularly Lewis Hamilton, fourth in the championship with 92 points to his name: “Overall, I think we are, with Alonso, the only ones who can consistently fight at the front,” Helmut Marko confides on the Servus TV broadcast. The Austrian, Dietrich Mateschitz’s right-hand man, still believes that “we cannot ignore Hamilton”: “McLaren is encountering some problems at the moment, but it’s a great team, Hamilton is a top driver, and the points gap is quite narrow. Two or three good results, and he is back in the game,” Marko estimates.
When asked in an interview with the official Formula One website which drivers stand out at the start of the season, Sebastian Vettel mentions the same names as Helmut Marko but believes they are not the only ones: “There are three of us within 29 points, after nine races. I think the standout drivers are Fernando [Alonso] – he is one of the most complete drivers – and Lewis [Hamilton], who is very fast even though he had a bit of bad luck at Silverstone. But there are plenty of others: Michael [Schumacher] is still in the game. The truth is that your performance depends on the performance of your car, and it can change from one week to the next.”
For his part, second in the drivers’ standings, Mark Webber has eyes only for Fernando Alonso, whom he presents as the man to beat at the moment: « I don’t look at who’s third, fourth, or fifth. I look at the guy next to me, and he’s doing well too, so we mustn’t let up. »
