04 April 2023 , 15:04
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Christian Horner very diplomatically called George Russell's theory that Red Bull are hiding their true pace "very generous" – while Max Verstappen dismissed the prospect of the FIA stepping in to slow his team down.
Red Bull have won all three races so far this season. It is clear that the RB19s are in a league of their own when it comes to race pace, though the margins of victory have not necessarily been as significant as you might expect when there is such a large per-lap performance gap.
At the Australian Grand Prix, for example, the largest gap Verstappen ever had over his nearest challenger was around nine seconds. The number of incidents, safety cars and red flags no doubt played a part in that, but Russell thinks there is another element at play.
Speaking after the race in Melbourne, the Mercedes racer expressed his belief that Red Bull are sandbagging. The FIA has, in the past, taken action to close the performance gap when one team threatens to run away with the title, and Russell thinks the defending champions might be trying to prevent that from happening.
"For sure they're holding back," he told the BBC Chequered Flag podcast. "I think they are almost embarrassed to show their full potential because the faster they seem, the more that the sport is going to try to hold them back somehow.
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"I think realistically they probably have seven-tenths advantage over the rest of the field. I don't know what the pace difference looks like at the moment but Max has got no reason to be pushing it, nor has Red Bull. They've done a really great job to be fair to them. We can't take that away, and we clearly have to up our game."
Max Verstappen thinks there's nothing the FIA could do to stop Red Bull anyway (Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/AP/REX/Shutterstock)Also speaking to the BBC, standings leader Verstappen brushed away the suggestion and confidently asserted that the FIA would be powerless to stop Red Bull anyway. "I mean, I think anyway, there's nothing really they can do," said the Dutchman, adding that he and his team had simply been taking extra care to manage his tyres.
And team boss Horner was singing from the same hymn sheet as he gave a diplomatic response to reporters in Melbourne. When asked about Russell's theory, he replied: "That's very generous of him! His team would know too well about those kinds of advantages.
"There's always an element of managing that goes on in any race. Because it was a one-stop race, and a very early one-stop race, of course there was an element of tyre management going on, and you could see how Checo [Perez] wasn't hanging about. He wasn't cruising around, or holding back seven-tenths a lap because he didn't want to show it. The grid was certainly a little bit closer here."