Red Bull aimed for five wins in the 2019 season, but in the end it was just wishful thinking. Helmut Marko famously made this prediction at the season start, but the team gets the blame along with Adrian Newey.
Right at the start of the season, Red Bull came to the conclusion that it would achieve at least five wins in the 2019 season. But alas this target was a little too high, because in the end the bulls could only win three times, all thanks to Max Verstappen.
Red Bull motorsport consultant Dr Helmut Marko now wants to explain why the predicted five victories didn’t happen after all.
Although Red Bull with Honda was almost in a transitional season, the Japanese manufacturer was able to convince with surprising performance and reliability as early as the first half of the season.
Even before the summer break, the Red Bull Honda combination had two victories – good prospects for the predicted five victories. However, the second half of the season wasn’t as successful as before, as Verstappen only managed a victory in Brazil.
“We stayed far below our potential. Five victories would have been possible,” Marko told the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest newspaper.
“The reasons for this were unfortunate circumstances such as various crashes on the one hand and on the other the chassis only began to improve later in the season,” explains the Austrian.
A rather damning assessment, in particular for chief designer Adrian Newey whose car Marko believes was under par, at least to start with. In fact, TJ13 reported Marko making such comments early in the season when both he and Christian Horner admitted that the aero balance of Newey’s car wasn’t there.
“With this [aero] problem, it is difficult to keep up the pace of Ferrari and Mercedes.” said Horner back in April.
Marko too describes the start of the season in particular as very weak, but says he expects an improvement in the future.
“This time everything should work optimally from the start. We’re fully concentrating on the new car”.
The 2019 Ferrari list of blunders
Marko admits Red Bull didn’t make 5 victories target – Next article ‘The Ferrari Blunders of 2019’ ……..should have instead been replaced with ‘Verstappen’s Blunders of 2019’.
If it hadn’t been for Verstappen’s errors of judgement, Red Bull may have had their 5 victories. M<any commentators seem to want to praise Verstappen to the skies for his verve and for having matured in 2019 but, in reality, if he had been more patient, he would be further forward than he is today.
Red Bull were unbelievably blessed with the reliability of the Honda engine in 2019 – something which McLaren and Alonso could only dream about in years previous – and yet they threw away bucket-loads of points through inexperience and poor driver management.
Question is whether Honda can do it all over again in 2020 and beyond and whether all the other young dudes will out-perform Verstappen (inc. Albon) next year. Here's hoping for a good record-breaking year!