The Red Bull cars of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber are “ridiculously faster” that the rest of the Formula 1 grid, Lewis Hamilton told reporters this weekend.
The difference could be as much as half a second per lap, the McLaren driver said, according to the Associated Press.
The McLaren driver says “the Red Bull is ridiculously faster than anyone else’s car. It’s insane.”
[snip]
Drivers Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber “have both got the fastest car by quite a big step. They should be quite a lot further ahead in general.”
Hamilton says McLaren is on par with Mercedes going into the Australian GP, behind Red Bull and Ferrari.
If Hamilton is right, I think one interesting piece to the puzzle heading into Melbourne is where, exactly, Ferrari ends up. Are they close to the Red Bull cars or maybe closer back to McLaren and Mercedes? It sure seemed at Bahrain that Ferrari was fairly close to Red Bull, although there were some laps when Vettel pulled a good ways ahead of Fernando Alonso.
Another interesting storyline — heck, I’ll go out on a limb and call it the most interesting storyline — is how Webber does at his home grand prix. He was well off his teammate at Bahrain and well off the rest of this year’s “big boys.”
Will Webbo step up this weekend? What says F1B? [Well, other than Grace. We know what she’ll say!]
