Red Bull return to dominance could begin at Silverstone
5 July, 2012
Sebastian Vettel has one victory to his name so far this year
Jul.5 (GMM) Some rather nervous eyes will be on Red Bull this weekend, after Sebastian Vettel stunned his rivals with the Red Bull RB8′s pace, last time out at Valencia, particularly in the late stages of qualifying and then in the early in the race when he simply took off into the distance, leaving his rivals in his wake.
Team boss Christian Horner had described the car’s improvements as “small”, but Vettel was suddenly a second per lap faster than any rival on the Spanish street circuit, recalling his utter dominance of the 2011 season.
“It was very impressive and so all the teams will be looking closely at what they do at Silverstone,” Mercedes’ Ross Brawn is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.
Horner, however, is keeping expectations down and told the Mirror, “So many cars have looked fast at different events. For sure we made a step forward at Valencia, but the circuit challenge of Silverstone is totally different.
“It has high speed corners and quick changes of direction and, probably, a lot cooler temperatures with the likelihood of rain as well.”
Sam Michael, sporting director at key rival McLaren agrees with Horner that it is too soon to predict more Red Bull dominance from now on.
“It’s clear [that] Red Bull have taken a step forward, although I don’t think it’s as big as the pace that Sebastian Vettel showed [at Valencia],” he told reporters during a team sponsor teleconference on Wednesday.
Australian Michael said he thinks that Red Bull’s Valencia dominance was less to do with the car updates, and more to do with simply getting the finicky tyres to work perfectly.
“A second a lap is quite a lot when you’ve changed fairly secondary parts on the top surface of the floor,” he said.
“I’d be pretty surprised if they maintained a second a lap gap to the rest of the field.”
Subbed by AJN.
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Come on Redbull Be the Champions and Dominate the Field
Adrian came up trumps. However, in Montreal Vettel was 0.7 secs faster than Lewis but Lewis won due to a controlled race by him looking after his tyres. In Valencia Vettel was faster than Lewis by 1 sec in the race but blew it by over-speeding causing the car to overheat resulting in alternate failure. If Romain or Alonso had qualified ahead of Lewis in this race would Vettel have had the same gap as the Valencia track is not suited to the McLarens and they had not made any progress with upgrades.
Silverstone should prove interesting as the track is user friendly to the Red Bull and the McLaren and also Ferrari. McLaren say they have brought in upgrades but by how much it improves the car is another matter.
I hope it does not rain