Two of Red Bull's newest recruits heaped praise upon Helmut Marko for being a "tough" but "very honest" leader in their early experience of learning from the Austrian.
Marko leads the Red Bull junior driver programme. He has a vast amount of experience and a remarkable track record of developing young racers, but is also infamous for being hard on the youngsters.
Last year, former Red Bull junior Jaime Alguersuari spoke about his work with "several psychologists" to help him to process the "trauma" from working with "always angry" Marko. But the feeling is that the Austrian has mellowed in recent years.
Zane Maloney and Enzo Fittipaldi are two of the newest members of the Red Bull setup, having joined towards the end of last year. They are team-mates at Carlin in Formula 2 this season and, in separate interviews with Mirror Sport, both of them had only positive things to way about their first impressions of working with Marko.
"He is tough, but I like it like that," said Maloney, who is in his debut F2 season. "I think that's the best way to go about it, in life in general. My dad was like that when I was growing up. You work hard and you get done what you need to get done.
"He doesn't like lazy behaviour and Helmut is the same, so I'm sure it will be good this year. Of course there will be some funny moments, but not too many bad moments."
And Fittipaldi said: "I like Dr Marko. He's very straightforward and just honest – and I like that. He just tells me what it is [he wants] and you know where you stand. I like the conversations and meetings I had with him last year.
"I like Dr Marko because he's a very straightforward person and I like straightforward people who say the truth. Just for him to have given me this opportunity is amazing, so I'm very grateful and this is just the beginning. I'm going to do my very best to get the most out of this."
Maloney enjoyed an impressive start to his Formula 2 career, finishing third in the feature race in Bahrain two weeks ago. Fittipaldi's start was more stead with three points across the sprint and feature events, but both are hopeful of competing for the title this year.
