Ferrari F1 has to understand Red Bull’s “mega big DRS effect”

The phenomenal efficiency of Red Bull’s DRS overtaking aid has been on full display this season, with Max Verstappen slashing through the field in Saudi Arabia to climb from 15th to second.

Verstappen’s DRS pass on Lewis Hamilton in the Australian Grand Prix also raised eyebrows, flying past the Mercedes driver with a speed difference of over 20km/h.

Meanwhile, his team-mate Sergio Perez, who had plenty of use of the DRS after starting at the back, recorded the highest top speed in Albert Park at 341km/h.

Vasseur says his team has to understand what Red Bull is doing to get such a big drag reduction from its rear wing design when the DRS is enabled.

“They have a mega big DRS effect, bigger than everybody else. And we have to understand how they’re able to do something like this,” he said.

“They are doing something different, and they are doing something better for sure.”

But when asked how surprised he was by Red Bull’s top speed gap, Vasseur said the Milton Keynes team’s advantage was actually bigger in 2022 as Ferrari has managed to claw back a part of the deficit.

“I think that the difference was probably bigger last year,” he said. “I think we compensated part of the gap. It was probably even more obvious last year. But we have still to improve on this area.

“That problem [is] that we were expecting to compensate a bit more, but the gap was bigger last year. But now for sure we have room for improvement on this area. We are on it.”

In qualifying, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were in the middle of the pack through the speed trap, with the caveat that the choice of downforce levels can also affect the outcome.

Polesitter Verstappen led the qualifying speed charts at 328.8km/h ahead of Perez at 326.7km/h. Williams’s low drag design saw Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant follow in third and fourth respectively, just 3km/h behind.

At the bottom of charts, Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas’s top speed of 319km/h was nearly 10km/h down on the Red Bulls.

Red Bull’s top speed advantage is expected to stand it in good stead at the upcoming Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which features a 2km-long straight.