“That’s nonsense,” Helmut Marko slams Toto Wolff’s ‘playing with rivals’ comments on Red Bull

Helmut Marko, the Red Bull team adviser, has deemed Toto Wolff's comments about Red Bull as utter nonsense.


“That’s nonsense,” Helmut Marko slams Toto Wolff’s ‘playing with rivals’ comments on Red Bull

Helmut Marko and Toto Wolff (Credits: Daily Mail)

Helmut Marko, ahead of the upcoming Bahrain GP, has bashed Toto Wolff for his comments on Red Bull. The German believes, the Milton-Keynes-based team did not show their full hand during the Q1 and Q2 sessions of yesterday’s qualifying.

Helmut Marko does not believe so and has made it known that his drivers were on the limit during all three sessions of qualifying. Wolff’s comments were based on the fact that Ferrari topped both Q1 and Q2 ahead of the reigning World Champions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JnS_D-m-Xk

Moreover, when the Mercedes F1 Team boss stressed it after qualifying, he added, “Yes, they played, Red Bull cruised around a bit so that they didn’t attract attention. I can remember what that was like, but in the end, they squeezed out one more time.”

FS Video

While Wolff has tried to act a bit clever with his comments, there is also a sense of disappointment as during the Brackley-based team’s glory days, they were the ones playing the games with the rival teams.

Also Read: Frederic Vasseur frustrated with Ferrari’s inability to maintain “maximum potential”

Helmut Marko’s verdict on Toto Wolff’s comments

Helmut Marko
Helmut Marko

F1 is a cut-throat competition where no one is willing to back down, be it on the track or off it. The same happened when it came to the “war of words” between Wolff and Marko. When the Red Bull team adviser was made aware of Wolff’s comments, he said, “That’s nonsense, both drove at the limit. But we still had a second set of tyres, that’s another two-tenths.”

He further added, “Max had relatively strong understeer, he doesn’t want to live with that. Then Perez was faster once, there was already unrest in it. In the end, we made a compromise with the set-up that satisfied Verstappen because Max really wanted to have pole, but the engineer prefers to go to the race set-up.”

Looking at the comments of Marko, it is quite safe to assume that both Max Verstappen and Perez drove at the limit during the qualifying sessions. Moreover, in order to keep Verstappen satisfied, Red Bull had to make a few compromises that ultimately helped both drivers in locking the front row.

In case you missed it:

“Typical Max,” Helmut Marko believes Max Verstappen was “uncontrollable” during the fastest lap scrap with Sergio Perez

“We will have to speak and fix it,” Fred Vasseur opens on Charles Leclerc’s radio mix-up in Jeddah