Red Bull's Helmut Marko has no doubts about which car is the best on the grid, pointing to Max Verstappen's win in Sepang as confirmation of his beliefs.
The 20-year-year Red Bull Racing driver put in a scintillating performance in Malaysia as he trounced Lewis Hamilton and his own team mate Daniel Ricciardo who finished third.
The head of the field was deprived of the presence of Ferrari following Kimi Raikkonen's demise on the grid and Sebastian Vettel's tail end start.
But Marko insists a couple of red cars racing at the front would have changed nothing on Sunday.
"Ferrari had problems,"he told Motorsport.com.
"But our race speed was comparable, because in the end Sebastian was on supersoft tyres, and you saw that, when he was catching Ricciardo, he went too close and he ruined his front tyres, so that’s why he had to stop his attack.
"But the big satisfaction is to overtake Mercedes and pull away. It shows that the works that we did since our poor start in Melbourne pays off, and the development goes in the right direction. Chassis-wise, for sure we are the best now.
"We’re going in the right direction and getting faster and faster, the car is really good. If everything stays together, then Max or Daniel can achieve a podium, and maybe one or the other can win."
As troublesome as the season has been for Verstappen, Marko thinks Sepang likely dissipated many of the bad memories of 2017 and made the Dutchman stronger.
"It was difficult. He was just 19 years old [for most of the season], but I think it was character-building in a hard way.
"But he understood, and he adapted, and he took a different approach, and you can see it."
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