Red Bull’s podium position at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix acts as evidence that the team can contend for this year’s Formula 1 title, according to Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.
Mercedes picked up a 1-2 finish to start the new campaign but were joined on the podium by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
It marked a podium first time out for the Red Bull-Honda partnership, the team’s first Albert Park podium in the hybrid era, and ended a decade-long drought from the top three for the Japanese marque.
“First of all, I’m really happy for Honda,” said Wolff.
“It’s their first podium since their return and they deserve it. They went through some really tough times, seeing the Honda on the podium and seeing the happy guys is great.
“[They are] very strong; you saw how they have eaten up Sebastian [Vettel] into Turn 3, the power was enormous.
“Seeing them come back strong makes me happy as they are a good group of people, they are decent men.
“The combination with Red Bull will become a threat. The level of performance, you must certainly have them in the calculation for the championship.”
Wolff also believes Ferrari will re-emerge as a potent threat in the coming races, suspecting it merely failed to extract the ultimate performance from its SF90 in Melbourne.
“For sure Ferrari didn’t meet their expectations,” commented Wolff.
“But as I said, I think it’s tricky to find the sweet spot of these new cars.
“In a race weekend where you have three days to find the right set-up, I think they took the wrong junction. I don’t think there’s a base performance problem.
“Yes, I’m surprised to not see them on the podium as they were really strong in Barcelona.
“Bahrain is a completely different ball game, very rough surface, very hot, and I think we could see quite some variances in terms of performance levels of the team.”
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