Other people’s success doesn’t always make others happy, and it seems that this is the case for Mercedes and Red Bull. With Christian Horner’s team clearly dominating the field, criticism has been levelled at Max Verstappen and the Austrian team.
The first comment on this came from Lewis Hamilton, who suggested that the Dutchman’s consistent victories have a lot to do with the fact that he has never had a teammate on the level of the Brit’s.
Subsequently, the controversy became even bigger when Toto Wolff, post-Italian Grand Prix, called Verstappen’s record of 10 consecutive race wins an unimportant record because no one would look at it, and it was just for Wikipedia.
In the wake of all this, Helmut Marko claimed that all these comments speak more about the Brackley team than the Milton Keynes team:
“This is the difference [between Mercedes and us].
Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
“We look at our team to get the best performance from our own team, and we don’t worry about Mercedes as long as they are not a serious competitor for us.
“We just look at our own. We do the best we can and we don’t make up all these kinds of stories like they are doing.”
Following these comments, Red Bull’s driver suggested that all this had probably stemmed from the German team not having the desired results this year, with Hamilton in third place in the championship and Russell in eighth, which is not encouraging…
“I think it’s very difficult for Mercedes to take defeat. That’s the problem you have when you’ve won for so many years, of course.
“But at the end of the day, you also have to be realistic. If it’s not possible [to win], then it’s not possible. You also have to be able to appreciate what the other teams are doing. We did that in the years when Mercedes dominated.”
The two-time Dutch World Champion, took the opportunity to recall that when the Wolff-led team was dominant, they looked at them and told themselves that they had to work harder, and asserted that one must concentrate on oneself as the rest cannot change it: “Back then we told ourselves ‘we have to work harder’, because at that time we were not good enough compared to them.
“You can keep saying that the things we are achieving at the moment are not that special, or at least that’s probably what they think, but in the end, you just have to focus on yourself because that’s the only thing you can influence.”
