F1: Red Bull will rebound at Suzuka – Marko

(GMM) Dr Helmut Marko thinks Red Bull will be ready to win again this weekend at Suzuka after their slump in Singapore this past weekend.

Max Verstappen’s run of ten consecutive wins came to a screaming halt with a surprise loss of form for the dominant Formula 1 team in Singapore.

Curiously, both Red Bull and even its closest rivals denied the loss of form could have had anything to do with the FIA’s new clampdown on flexible bodywork.

“I know you’d all like to blame it on that, but unfortunately, we can’t,” said team boss Christian Horner. “We haven’t changed a single component on the car from Monza.

“We knew before the weekend that it would be closer in Singapore, but what actually happened was a surprise for us.”

Horner’s counterpart Toto Wolff said Singapore was also a spanner in the works during Mercedes’ ultra-dominant era.

“We know what it’s like to come to Singapore with a dominant car and then not perform,” said the Austrian.

“I’m sure it wasn’t the technical directives,” Wolff insisted. “It didn’t change anything.”

The leading counter-theory is that Red Bull was simply caught out by the smoother than expected new tarmac and the slashing of several corners from the previous layout.

“We think we know roughly why we had these problems,” Red Bull’s Marko told Bild newspaper.

“I am full of confidence after this performance that this mystery from qualifying will not arise in Suzuka,” he added.

In fact, he said without the inopportune timing of the safety car on Sunday, “Max would have won the race”.

“We are now looking forward to Suzuka because, as I said, we are understanding the problem,” Marko told Kronen Zeitung newspaper.

“That’s why we are fully optimistic that we’ll be able to bounce back there. The track there suits our car, but what makes me really positive is that we saw that our speed is already back.”

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Christian Horner says the  Japanese GP will be revealing if Red Bull’s problem is track specific

“Let’s see if it [Red Bulls’s struggles] is circuit-specific.

“If Ferrari are first and second in Japan next weekend, then we’ll see if there’s a significant jump.”

“But we’ve seen form move around so much this year, the one consistent was ourselves. This past weekend, we were the one that found ourselves slightly out of shape.”