Last Updated on December 2 2023, 3:32 pm

Max Verstappen and Red Bull have completed the most dominant season Formula One has ever seen and yet the Dutch world champion may not have been credited with the absolute genius status he really deserves. 

Much has been made of the RB19 Adrian Newey designed car which destroyed the competition winning 21 of the 22 races in 2023 and even Lewis Hamilton suggested he would have performed far better had he been afforded the luxury of the Red Bull car given to Sergio Perez.

 

 

 

Hamilton bemoans pace of RB19

“At the moment, it’s impossible to beat the Red Bull unless they don’t finish. They’re eight-tenths to one second faster per lap than everybody else,” Hamilton said in Zandvoort as the teams returned from the four week summer break.

“It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it. Do I want to be as fast as them? Of course. Would I like to have a car that’s as fast as them? Of course.

“If was in Sergio’s car, Max would not be having the same time he’s having now. But it’s not the way life is,” Lewis bemoaned to there assembled media.

Yet at the start of the season Perez looked to be in with a shout of challenging his team mate for the 2023 drivers champion. The Mexican driver won two of the first four Grand Prix and was just eight points behind his team mate as F12 headed to round five in Miami.

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Of course that was as good as it got for Checo who ended the year with 290 points behind Verstappen who would have won the title regardless had he just competed in either just the first or last 11 races of the year.

The obvious conclusion is that Verstappen is merely a far better driver than Perez despite him notching up his best ever finish in the drivers’ championship.

Yet what would have happened had Red Bull placed the likes of Hamilton or Leclerc alongside the Dutch driver, is indeed the million dollar question?

Clearly Hamilton believes the RB19 would have been an easier car to drive than the offering Mercedes gave him, but is that really the case?

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Verstappen revealed he struggled early doors with the RB19 and despite it being an improvement on his 2022 car, finding exactly how to extract the best out of the Red Bull 2023 challenger took Max several rounds of the championship to master.

By the time the F1 circuit arrived in the US for the first of three races this year, it appeared Verstappen had got on top of the RB19 quirks as he demolished Perez in the Grand Prix.

Despite clipping the wall in qualifying, Perez claimed pole position while his team mate failed to make his final push run following the red flag brought out following Leclerc’s crash in his ferrari.

Max started the Sunday race in P9 and was in the early laps around 18 secedes behind Perez who was leading the Grand Prix. Yet Verstappen slowly made progress through the field passing Valteteri Bottas quickly then Magnussen and Leclerc who were battle;ing for sixth place.

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George Russell, Piere Gasly, Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso were all up next and in the closing stages of the race, Verstappen overtook his team mate taking the chequered flag some five seconds ahead of the second Red Bull driver.

Perez did little wrong but such was the pace of Verstappen there was little the Mexican driver could do and so was the start of a miserable run for Checo which pretty much defined the rest of his season.

Verstappen’s performance in Miami demonstrated how at one he had become with his RB19 but conversely Perez made it crystal clear even with nigh on a 20 second lead and half the field between himself and Max, he was unable to extract anything like the performance of his team mate from nigh on identical racing machinery.

The stories then swirled around the paddock that red Bull had developed the car around Verstappen’s driving style, something which team boss Christian Horner rebutted with scorn on a number of occasions.

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When asked directly whether Red Bull deigned cars around his driving style, Verstappen was clear this was definitely not the case

“I don’t think it’s necessarily just suited to my driving style. I think as a driver, you need to adapt to what you get, and that’s also what I did when I joined Red Bull,” said Verstappen.

Prior to the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull’s arch rival team boss tried to spice the pot when claiming Red Bull were favouring Verstappen in their car design and development.

“We’ve seen that Max has destroyed every single team mate that was with him. Whether it’s his ability to create a car around himself that’s just very tricky to control but fast if you can, and that makes those gaps.”

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Yet after the Monza race when Verstappen racked up his record breaking tenth consecutive victory, Horner was disparaging about Wolff’s comments saying, “It shows a total lack of understanding of how a race car and team develop, if Toto thinks that we’re developing a car around a single driver.

“You develop a car to be as quick as you can, and sometimes quick cars are difficult cars. That’s what’s historically been the case. And I think that drivers adapt.”

Of course we’ll never know what would have happened had Hamilton, Leclerc or even Norris had raced in the same machinery as Verstappen but F1 pundit Tom Clarkson believes the world champion’s rivals over estimate how difficult the RB19 was to drive.

“I feel that these teams are going to have a bit of a shock,” said Clarkson after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. “I think they all think the Red Bull is really easy to drive, and it’s clearly not.”

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Clarkson had discussed this at length with Daniel Ricciardo who tested the car before his return to racing with AlphTauri and the Aussie revealed how tough it was to maximise the pace in the RB19.

“{Ricciardo] says at low speed, the Red Bull is not easy to drive, and Max has said that himself as well.

“So there’s no magic bullet.”

Former F1-driver and current ambassador for the Aston Martin team, Pedro de la Rosa, emphasised similar sentiments but believes the challenges are being experienced by the entire field since the introduction of the new ground effect cars.

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“I think that obviously the Red Bull is not an easy car,” said De la Rosa. “I mean, that’s for sure. I think that Checo’s performances prove that point.

“However, I don’t think that any car on the grid is easy to drive nowadays with the ground effect because all these cars with speed move the aero balance forward massively.”

This is something Hamilton has complained about for two years but the seven times world champion believes his Mercedes design with the advanced cockpit position is to blame for the lack of connection he feels with the rear of the car.

Yet Hamilton may be shocked when he gets his way with next season’s W15 because shifting the cockpit position will have little affect on how the centre of pressure moves quickly from rear to front with the underfloor downforce the F1 cars now create.

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De La Rosa continues to explain: “So you will never have a perfectly balanced car in low, medium, and high-speed corners. If you are aiming at high-speed balance, you will have a very understeery car in medium and slow speed [corners]. So it’s never going to be perfect.”

This is of course why from F1 race venue to venue, different teams have been second quickest to Red Bull and Lando Norris openly admitted his much improved McLaren was great in the high side turns but poor at a track with a number of low speed corners.

The Aston Martin man concludes by heaping praise on Verstappen for mastering the style of driving required to maximise the new far less stable breed of F1 cars now being designed.

“So I think that he’s just proved to be a very, very special driver,” said de la Rosa. “We are talking about one of the best drivers in Formula 1 history. That’s how good Max Verstappen is.”

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Red Bull and max Verstappen will be planning their expected 2024 F1 conquest with Max hoping to add a fourth consecutive world title to his trophy cabinet and emulate the Red Bull legend that was Sebastian Vettel.

So if Lewis Hamilton believes his team is missing a trick and somehow they can give him a car that feels like the ones he won his world titles with, he may be very disappointed because ground effect cars are here to stay – even beyond the next big rule changes for 2026.

Yet Lewis can take heart that Alonso has proven you can teach ‘an old dog new tricks’ from the seven podiums the Spaniard collected on his was to the best season he has had since his days at Ferrari now a decade ago.

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