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Red Bull chief engineering officer Rob Marshall reckons Ferrari had a better car than Red Bull at the start of the season.
Marshall looked back at the season where Red Bull seem destined for the double after securing the drivers title in Suzuka. He was a guest at the latest edition of the F1 Nation podcast where he looked back on the season where Red Bull lost two of the first three races to Ferrari and were on the back foot.
It wasn't until Miami and Baku that Red Bull started taking over and showed impressive race pace to counter Ferrari. Marshall added that this season's championship battle was never going to be easy with the new regulations in play. Even at this stage of the season where Red Bull have a comfortable lead, their advantage is still marginal over Ferrari. He said:
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"It was never going to be easy, and it still hasn't been, but I guess the first half of the year, Ferrari had the edge on us. They had a better car, but I think it is still only marginal, but we are a little bit better now. Under new regulations, it's always difficult to know whether you've done the right thing or not. We got to the first test, and we found that actually what we've done wasn't too far off the pace."
One of the keys to success, according to Marshall, was Red Bull not having any major design flaws that could have proved detrimental in the long run. He said:
"We didn't seem to be struggling on certain issues that other people were clearly having problems with - and have continued to. So I don't think it was a great triumph of design, but we certainly avoided some design, banana peels/skins, the other people fell and slipped on."
Red Bull (619) have a sizeable lead over Ferrari (454) and could wrap up their first constructor title in nearly a decade this weekend at the US GP in Austin.
The whole thing was potentially a disaster - Red Bull
Rob Marshall said that as Red Bull were one of the last teams to move to the new regulations, the team team could have potentially been on the back foot.
The chief engineering officer added that as the regulations were completely different, there was no carryover. So the team was fortunate to not take the wrong direction in terms of development. He said:
"There wasn't a carry over nut or bolt on the car. The whole aero regulations are different; chassis regs are different, new suspension and gearbox, so there's nothing you could really take from the year before going: 'Alright, so at least we don't have to worry about that.'"
Marshall added:
"The whole thing was potentially a disaster, but luckily nothing was. We've been able to iron out some of the smaller problems we had and then build on that, so it has been pretty good really."
Red Bull look destined to pick up their first constructor title in F1 since 2013. This will also be the first season since 2014 where Mercedes will not be the constructors champion.
