Red Bull tipped to ‘walk it’ at Spanish GP under one key condition

Max Verstappen thumbs up

After four races of back-and-forth momentum swings between McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull, Naomi Schiff has tipped the latter to “walk it” at the Spanish Grand Prix.

After 2023’s dominance where Red Bull won all but one Grand Prix, this season the Milton Keynes squad is being made to work for their victories.

Red Bull predicted to dominant in Spain

Although Max Verstappen has won six of nine races, he has lost two of the last four in Miami and Monaco, was pushed to the line at Imola where he was a mere 0.725s ahead of Lando Norris and was fortunate with the timing of a Safety Car in Canada.

The season’s stats have Verstappen with six wins, Ferrari have two and McLaren with one.

It has former W Series racer Schiff declaring “three teams” are in the fight.

“Every single race is going to make the difference now because they are three teams relatively entered with a chance to fight for this title,” she said on the latest Sky F1 podcast.

“Barcelona should be the race that shows us who’s in it and who’s not. So let’s just hold that thought for now.”

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But while Schiff is dreaming of a title race, her fellow pundit and 1996 World Champion Damon Hill believes Red Bull still have the advantage.

And it’s one that will be evident at the Circuit de Catalunya as the track should suit the characteristics of the RB20. More to the point, there aren’t a lot of kerbs to trip up the Red Bull.

“I’m going to get a reputation for being the person who pours cold water on everyone’s hopes,” Hill said.

“I just think Red Bull will be much happier in Spain. I think their car will work, they don’t have kerbs to worry about, they’ve got long, sweeping corners.

“But having said that, I agree that McLaren have found something. They’ve made more progress in anybody up and down the grid and they were also good on their tyres.

“So tyre wear, how they wear the left tyre at Barcelona – it just absolutely eats through the tyre. This is going to be a big test to see whether McLaren can actually run on a track like Spain. And that will then will give us a clue for things like Silverstone, Spa and some of the other circuits we go to that are like Barcelona.”

Schiff agrees Spain will most likely be on for the Red Bull win column.

“And weather forecasts as well,” she added. “What we’ve probably learned over the last couple of races as well is that the McLaren prefers a cooler track and the Red Bull prefers a warmer track.

“So if it is hot in Barcelona, with the deg that there is there, I think Red Bull will walk it . I think there’ll be there’ll be pretty dominant.

“But I think it is sort of on a knife edge that car, where if the conditions just aren’t right, if the tracks were too bumpy or over to kerby, then it does sort of throw the balance of the Red Bull out which we haven’t seen in the last two seasons.

“So let’s see, I think there’s still a lot to play for.”