A top Ferrari chief believes Red Bull are "doing something very, very clever" which is helping them blow their Formula 1 rivals away in every race.
The Red Bulls have won all five races so far this season – four of them one-two finishes. No one has even come close to matching the race pace of the RB19s, though the story has not always been the same in qualifying.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez have taken four poles out of five between them, but the gaps have not quite been so significant. And, in Azerbaijan, Charles Leclerc was able to live up to his qualifying king status by setting the fastest time ahead of both the Sprint and the main race.
Ferrari driver coach Jock Clear believes his team has been in with more of a chance on a Saturday because Red Bull are purposely setting up their cars to sacrifice some one-lap pace in order to be quicker on Sunday. "We have a good understanding of where the issues lie. It's quantifying it," he said of Ferrari's pace struggles.
"So, in some ways, we would say, 'OK, we're looking at what's going on in the race compared to what's going on qualifying'. We can see some differences. Maybe what we can't quite align is how those differences turn out.
"That's the process that we're going through at the moment, [it] is to identify what we can do, or what we can shift around in terms of our focus, to maybe bring that race pace back into line.
"Do we have to take a hit in qualifying? That's always a very difficult pill to swallow because races are very often made in qualifying. So, we can't afford to take our eye off the qualifying ball. But certainly, we need to fully understand how we can get the race pace.
"We have to take our hat off to the Red Bull and say they are doing something very, very clever. That car works very, very well in race pace. We might also conclude that to do so, maybe they are giving up some qualifying pace. That's why we can compete with them because they're not optimal in qualifying."
