Helmut Marko has claimed that Red Bull didn't have the fastest race car in Canada last weekend, admitting that the championship leaders struggled to get their tyres warmed up.
Max Verstappen still won the race with relative ease but the gap to the rest of the field was smaller than it's been all season, while his team-mate Sergio Perez finished just sixth after failing to pressure the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz ahead of him.
Speaking after the race, Marko called the famous red cars the fastest in Montreal, claiming only their disastrous qualifying session kept them from challenging for a race win.
The pace of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton behind Verstappen had given rise to some hope among fans that the second half of the season may be more competitive, but the two Ferraris - running an alternate strategy - did perform very well.
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"Thank God we succeeded," the Red Bull veteran said. "We never thought it possible to join the elite club of teams with a hundred victories. It certainly wasn't easy.
"We had problems getting our tyres up to temperature, especially with the hard tyres. The race was more difficult than we had anticipated."
He added: "I have to say, thank God Ferrari had to start so far back, because they were actually the fastest on both compounds."
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