Marko satisfied after Bahrain: 'The rest made it easy for us'

Red Bull started the season strongly with a 1-2 in Bahrain. Almost immediately, Verstappen managed to create distance from the rest, after which he was able to drive in the lead for the rest of the race without any further challenge. After Charles Leclerc dropped out with engine problems, Perez was also at peace and effortlessly finished second. In the end, there was a 26-second gap between Perez and third place, Fernando Alonso.

Marko is overjoyed with the result. "It was a very strong race for us, but then our opponents made it easy for us. With Leclerc out, we were no longer forced to push the limit and Alonso took too long to get past the other cars. The temperatures here were very high and I don't know if we could have raced full out, we could have had problems."

Wind tunnel penalty has been handled well by Red Bull

This year, Red Bull is racing with somewhat of a handicap. As a result of breaching the 2021 budget cap, the team had less testing time in the wind tunnel this year. If that has already hindered the development of the car, there was absolutely no sign of it in Bahrain.

"The penalty was announced relatively early on," Marko explained. "So we focused relatively early on making an evolution of the old car. We looked at how we could optimise what was maybe not working great on the old car. If we sent something to the wind tunnel, it had to work straight away, and it did. The core team has been together for 15 years now, they know what to do. They work together very well."