Christian Horner has warned that Mercedes are “not standing nonetheless” within the battle with Pink Bull for the Formula 1 drivers’ and constructors’ championship.
The groups at present look very evenly matched, with Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen taking one win apiece from the opening two races.
The 2 contenders are separated by a single level within the drivers’ championship, whereas Mercedes maintain a seven-point benefit within the constructors’ standings, and waiting for the Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao subsequent weekend, it’s tough to find out which staff may have the higher hand.
Whereas Mercedes struggling in pre-season testing, they’d taken clear strides by the point they arrived on the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and Horner mentioned that the battle rests on quite a few elements going ahead.
“It’s all going to be about marginal beneficial properties,” he mentioned. “It’s about who can develop the automobile successfully inside the price range cap clearly, about reliability, operational incremental beneficial properties, about human efficiency, and concerning the drivers.
“That’s what it must be about basically, the 2 greatest drivers within the sport going face to face. I definitely hope we are able to maintain this degree of efficiency.
“Mercedes, you possibly can see the progress they’ve made for the reason that tough begin within the Bahrain check. They’re in fine condition they usually’re not standing nonetheless so we have to preserve pushing, looking for efficiency and guarantee that we’ve got good weekends.”
Assessing the distinction between the 2 automobiles at Imola, Horner highlighted the power of the Mercedes on the finish of the primary stint the place Hamilton started to chop into Verstappen’s lead.
“The tempo is clearly very near Mercedes, and there are strengths and weaknesses of the automobiles in several areas,” he added.
“Should you take a look at the efficiency on the inter tyre at Imola, we had been faster originally of the stint, they had been faster on the finish.
“The damage sample throughout the entrance seems to be totally different between the 2 automobiles, and I might say, Lewis’s tempo, he rode his luck, however as soon as they had been on the identical spec of tyre, in clear air, they seemed very, very aggressive.
“Certainly, he acquired the quickest lap. I believe he had the advantage of a DRS originally of that lap, which is three or four-tenths.
“Nevertheless it’s very, very tight. It’s about getting essentially the most out of the automobile on a case-by-case foundation.”