Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull Racing (RBR) machine polished the Albert Park circuit with the rest of the field at the Australian Grand Prix last weekend, finishing a healthy 22-seconds ahead of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, without the use of KERS.
Hamilton however believes that RBR cannot afford to keep racing much longer without KERS if they expect to continue their dominance of the field. The Briton explained that the characteristics of the Albert Park circuit didn’t make the need for KERS vital but that the second race of the year, the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang International Circuit (SIC), will elevate the need for KERS.
“Malaysia is a massive downforce track so you're going to see Red Bull be as quick if not quicker. But I have no doubts our car can be competitive as well. I don't know if you've seen their front wing but it's like trailing on the ground. That is massive downforce. Ours is much higher off the ground. That alone is like 20 points of downforce, like half a second, so as soon as we close that loophole or find out how to do that we will close that performance gap,” said Hamilton.
“We have some small upgrades coming. Whether or not we can compete with them on pure qualifying pace, I don't know, but I think when it comes to the race there is a much longer straight going into turn one. If we can get on the first two rows again we can compete with our KERS. I don't think they are going to be able to go too long without KERS,” he added.
Even RBR team boss Christian Horner agreed with that notion, admitting that KERS was a must for the team at Sepang. He also added that the KERS system was not used in Australia due to a minuscule reliability issue with the system, confirming that it was not reported because the team didn’t want its competitors to know about it.
Hamilton’s teammate, Jenson Button, believes that the KERS setup being used by RBR currently is much better than the one McLaren are using.
“Most teams are getting 3.5 to 5 tenths out of KERS, and I think they are getting 1.5. It’s good for us and we need to have a strong KERS system because in terms of their pace and every other area they are very strong,” he said.
Button also believes that RBR and Vettel were not showing their true pace at Australia, despite the dominant victory, “I still think we are a long way off the Red Bulls, I don't think Vettel is showing the full pace yet. He can make some good improvements for the next race because this is really the starting point with this exhaust system.”
Source: Autosport
