Tires are key for Red Bull

The Malaysian Grand Prix offered a surprising outcome with the victory of Fernando Alonso before Sergio Perez et Lewis Hamilton. While strategies, weather conditions and racing incidents all played an important role in the result, the disappointments mainly came from the teams failing to exploit their tires. Mercedes is the most telling example since the team has a car very efficient but whose optimal operating range is very limited by premature wear of the rubbers. This is how Nico Rosberg fell out of the top ten to fail in 13th position.

With the end of blowing exhausts, Red Bull Racing seems more behind compared to the last two seasons. To recover, Christian Horner intends to take advantage of the three-week break to concentrate on tire wear before tackling the Chinese Grand Prix. “Consistency will be very important throughout the season. HRT played its role (with the puncture of Sebastian Vettel), but I don't think anyone could have envisaged that Sergio (Perez) would threaten Fernando (Alonso) for victory. We will use the time available to us to better understand the tires. This is the data that seems most essential to us. They seem to have changed a lot from last year, you can see that different cars are fast at different times. For no reason, we saw Kimi (Räikkönen) shine at the end of the race and string together the times. »

Discover the analysis of the Malaysian Grand Prix carried out by our special correspondents in the next issue of AUTOhebdo available from Tuesday in digital version and from Wednesday on newsstands.