Marko: Vettel “must raise his game”
After four successful seasons, Sebastian Vettel is experiencing a rather complicated start to the year 2014, but Helmut Marko believes that it's up to the German to work harder to adapt to his new car so that things improve.
After a difficult start to the season, marked by reliability issues with the Renault power unit specifically, Helmut Marko believes that the four-time reigning world champion, Sebastian Vettel, must do better.
After the Chinese Grand Prix, Marko asked him to stop complaining about his RB10 and to adapt, as he told BBC Sport: « I told him, ‘There are 50 engineers working on this engine and they can’t fix this problem. You’re a great driver, it’s up to you. You have to do it. »
If he can’t fix the problem with the car, the simplest thing is [to do it with] the driver. He must raise his game level.
Mistreated by the newcomer in the Austrian team, Daniel Ricciardo – who currently counts 1 win and 79 points compared to 0 wins and 60 points for Vettel, Marko believes that the German has more often fallen victim to technical or mechanical problems and has struggled with the new regulation: « Sebastian complained about having a bad car. Sebastian wanted everything to be absolutely perfect. His main problem was that downshifting always destabilized the rear and he couldn’t understand that we couldn’t solve it. »
« Moreover, he thinks that the path chosen by F1 is not the right one – the cars should be monsters, not really easy to drive. With all these issues, maybe he wasn’t as focused as he should have been, but that has changed. Already in Spain, we saw a different approach from him, » added Marko.
Marko also revealed that Red Bull almost signed Lewis Hamilton for the 2013 season, but ultimately the Brit was not hired because he believed that cohabitation with Vettel would not have gone very well: “We considered things, but we thought it wouldn’t work. To succeed, you need a certain harmony.”
