Surprise F1 team competes with Red Bull in MAJOR statistic

Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, Saudi Arabia GP, Ferrari, Red Bull, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Insights

Surprise F1 team competes with Red Bull in MAJOR statistic

This F1 team has highlighted its straight line speed advantage after the Saudi Arabia GP.

By Sheona Mountford.

Friday 15 March 2024 22:00

Red Bull have new competitors in the race for the best straight line speed after some intriguing figures from the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix were revealed.

The team came home for their second dominant 1-2 finish in a row, with Max Verstappen reigning victorious for the 19th time in the last 20 races.

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The two Red Bull drivers were followed by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, and Oscar Piastri in the McLaren.

George Russell managed to finish 6th in the Mercedes, with the team currently sitting in 4th in the constructors, clear there is still work to be done.

Perez, Verstappen and Leclerc on the Saudi Arabia GP podium 2024

Shovlin acknowledges Mercedes straight line speed advantage

“We were actually one of the fastest cars, if not the fastest car, in a straight line,” Shovlin said in a Mercedes post-race debrief video.

“So we’re on quite a light wing level and what we could do is slow ourselves down in sector two and three to try and recover a bit of that time in sector one.

“But ideally we’d like to keep that and work out a way to try and improve sector one by means other than just putting a load more downforce on the car and then paying the price for it on the straight.”

Shovlin also analysed where Mercedes could improve their performance for the next race.

“The big one is we don’t really have enough grip there [Saudi]. So that’s one of the things that we are working hard on this week because Melbourne has a similar nature of corners.

"We’re doing a lot of work to try and understand why we did not seem to have the grip of some of our close competitors.”

Red Bull Max Verstappen Ferrari Mercedes McLaren Charles Leclerc