During qualifying in Australia, the top six speeds — shared at the time by Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull — had been close, but after Valtteri Bottas crashed out of the session, Hamilton’s pace skyrocketed, somewhat suspiciously.
“They got nervous because Bottas crashed, and all of a sudden they put full power on,” Red Bull head of driver development Helmut Marko told Motorsport.com. “As we call it, ‘party mode.’
“They normally don’t need it, so they used all of it, and it’s obvious that they are playing with all of us.
“In the beginning it was just us who were complaining, and it was, ‘Red Bull is always complaining.’ Fortunately, after qualifying the others woke up, and now there’s a lot of discussions.”
“There are so many relatively easy things to solve it and make it more equal. You could say that you should race with the mode that you do qualifying with. That would be a solution.
“They could do it for the next race, and then it won’t happen for the next race.”
Although Hamilton himself denied the “party mode” engine setting, team boss Toto Wolff later confirmed that it did exist and had been used. Wolff added that it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction to use the mode and that Hamilton had used it on his first run. The extra second of pace found on his final run was, according to Wolff, all from Hamilton.
It is well known that Renault does not have the best power unit on the grid and Red Bull has frequently made threats to split with its engine partner over the past few years. Red Bull boss Christian Horner said that the FIA could limit teams to one engine mode for the whole weekend and, “It was a hell of a party — we would like to go to those kinds of parties!”
“You can see it. Q1, Q2 last year, they don’t take any risks, and then they wind it up in Q3. Obviously, the margin from Q2 to Q3 was significant — the track didn’t rubber in that much.
“Admittedly Max [Verstappen] made a little mistake, we should have potentially been within half a second, probably about what the delta is in modes.
“It is something that should be considered, that you effectively have a parc fermé, the moment you drive out for qualifying, that is your engine mode for quali and the race. It’s up to the FIA, it’s down to them to work out what they want to do.”