Helmut Marko provokes Frederic Vasseur

Helmut Marko’s words

The 2026 engine regulations continue to cause discussion, but Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko speaking to Motorsport-Total went further: “No one is our ally at the moment. Frederic Vasseur on the other hand continues to cultivate his love affair with Toto Wolff, so these concerns have little echo in Ferrari, while in Renault they do not know what they are doing.”

“Every automaker tells us that the battery will be half the weight and have twice the range in three years. But it’s not a given, so we can reduce the importance of electric and shift the balance back to 60-40 in favor of the combustion engine. Also because the weight of the battery is a safety risk: the Silverstone accident in 2021 could have had different consequences with such a heavy battery,” he added, speaking more seriously. We have cars that are approaching the level of sports cars in terms of weight and size, but the circuits remain the same. We should widen them all by one meter to keep up with the development of the cars. We need to go back to lighter and smaller cars, but if you need 30 liters of fuel just to charge the battery then something is wrong.”

Helmut Marko had also spoken to motorsport-total.com about Max Verstappen: “For me, the master of reading the race has always been Hamilton, because of how he was able to manage the tires, but now Max has caught up with him and overall maybe he is even better than Lewis because Verstappen has more pure speed.”

Not only that, “Max would be able to put cars like the AlphaTauri or Haas in pole position, which are single-seaters that perform better in Qualifying than in Race. It’s hard, however, to imagine how long he would want to struggle behind the wheel of an AlphaTauri.”