F1 aero chief declares key area Red Bull are NOT quickest

One F1 team has highlighted its straight line speed advantage at the Saudi Arabia GP last weekend - and it's not Red Bull.

Max Verstappen led most of the laps at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, finishing 13 seconds ahead of teammate Sergio Perez to achieve his 56th career win.

READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: F1 champion insists Red Bull NOT responsible for 2023 success

The two Red Bull drivers were followed by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, and Oscar Piastri in the McLaren.

George Russell managed to finish 6th in the Mercedes, with the team currently sitting in 4th in the constructors, clear there is still work to be done.

Shovlin acknowledges Mercedes straight line speed advantage

Despite not being as quick as their rivals, Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin identified the strengths of the car.

“We were actually one of the fastest cars, if not the fastest car, in a straight line,” Shovlin said in a Mercedes post-race debrief video.

“So we’re on quite a light wing level and what we could do is slow ourselves down in sector two and three to try and recover a bit of that time in sector one.

“But ideally we’d like to keep that and work out a way to try and improve sector one by means other than just putting a load more downforce on the car and then paying the price for it on the straight.”

READ MORE: Hamilton demands 'BIG changes' amid Mercedes frustration

Shovlin also analysed where Mercedes could improve their performance for the next race.

He added: “The big one is we don’t really have enough grip there [Saudi]. So that’s one of the things that we are working hard on this week because Melbourne has a similar nature of corners. We’re doing a lot of work to try and understand why we did not seem to have the grip of some of our close competitors.”

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