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Red Bull's team principal Christian Horner has suggested that qualifying engine modes should be a part of parc ferme regulations. After the cars leave the garages at the start of qualifying, they are locked into parc ferme, which means the set-ups can't be altered.
At qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix last Saturday, Red Bull's Max Verstappen was seven-tenths down on pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes has developed a Q3 engine mode over the years in the hybrid era, which boosts the engine's power for a short period of time.
With Renault's engine slacking behind the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari, Horner has called for restrictions to the qualifying engine modes: "Like you have parc ferme when the cars leave for qualifying, maybe engine modes should be the same from the moment you leave the garage to the end of the Grand Prix," Horner said.
"Lewis' time came predominantly between Q2 and Q3. They have a qualy mode that they don't need to use in the earlier parts of qualifying, because why stress the engine?"
"You only have to look in [Saturday's] speed traps where all the Renault engines were grouped together with varying amounts of downforce on the car. That is where we need to make progress. There are bits in the pipeline. Renault are not divulging everything that they're up to but it's certainly something that we're pushing for."
Since the hybrid era began in 2014, Red Bull has taken just a single pole position, courtesy of Daniel Ricciardo at the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix. Despite the apparent lack of pace over one lap, Horner believes that there are plenty of positives to take away from the opening race of the 2018 season.
"We've got one lap [in clean air] in the Grand Prix to judge our pace on which Daniel set the fastest lap of the race on," he said. "I think we have a quick race car, it's just unfortunate on this track not to be able to use it.
"Taking the positives out of the weekend, it's the first time in the hybrid era we have got two cars to the finish. We got the fastest lap of the race, and that wasn't through putting a set of ultra softs on - it was genuine pace. I think we have a quick race car. The negative for us is still the deficit in qualifying. The party mode, we'd like to go to Lewis' party."
Fergal Walsh
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
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f1fan0101
Posts: 1,804
Boohoo... He wouldn't be complaining if he had the powerful engine