Despite the team securing a comfortable 1-2 in Sunday evening’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko said the team’s pace at the end of the race was “alarming”.
Sergio Perez led teammate Max Verstappen home by 2.1 seconds in Baku on Sunday night. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was third, a further 21.2 seconds behind.
The pair at times were pulling away from the field by about a second per lap.
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The only somewhat negative to Red Bull’s afternoon was the timing of Verstappen’s pitstop.
With the AlphaTauri of Nyck De Vries parked at the side of the track having clipped the wall and broken the front left wheel.
TV screens didn’t initially show the incident, only De Vries parked on the side of the road with the engine running, suggesting he was attempting to recover.
At the same time, Red Bull pitted Verstappen, only to be caught out when the safety car was called moments after he left the pits.
It meant he dropped from the lead back to third, behind Perez and Leclerc. He got back past Leclerc on the restart, but was unable to make inroads on his teammate.
But being “satisfied” with what appeared to be a comprehensive victory, Marko pointed out both Leclerc and the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso were lapping quicker than the pair up front in the closing laps.
“A one-two and a first and third place in the sprint, we are very satisfied with that,” Marko said.
“Max was unlucky with the Safety Car, and didn’t manage to find a good set-up which cost him a lot of time, so he couldn’t get the most out of the car – and keep up with Perez.
“A big compliment to Checo, he was fast from the start and made no mistakes, it was a [brilliant] race.
“But what was alarming for us was that Leclerc as well as Alonso managed to clock the same lap times as us in the last six to eight laps. We had to work hard to make sure nothing happened at the end of the race.”
Marko said Perez did ask if they should slow down and conserve the car, but he said the team let them push each other all the way to the finish.
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“We let them drive flat out,” he said.
Meanwhile, Verstappen said he expected the team would conduct their own review into the decision to pit him when they did.
“I could see the [De Vries] stopping but you see it on the screen, you can not look into every detail on whether every wheel is connected to the car properly,” Verstappen said.
“Of course, the team has a bit more overview to that but we will look into that to see if there was anything we could have done differently.
“I don’t know when the exact call came to pit so it is a bit difficult to say at the moment.”
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