Last Updated on March 1 2024, 2:32 pm
While the media frenzy pours over the illicit details of the email bombshell sent by someone trying to destroy Christian Horner, the reality is big questions remain over the on track pecking order at the start of the 2024 season.
Mercedes topped the FP2 time sheets with a 1-2 for the first time since Canada 2023 where they then qualified for the race in P3/P4. Yet the true performance of the cars over one lap pace will only be revealed when qualifying is complete.
Ricciardo or Tsunoda?
Even then it will be the race pace that determines the eventual winner of the opening Grand Prix of the 2024 season and early signs were that Verstappen had the least drop off in times when completing a long run simulation on the opening day in Bahrain.
As if to prove the point that practice does not determine the qualifying and race order the last time Max Verstappen failed to top a single practice time was in Hungary 2023, but he went on to win the race by a margin greater than 30 seconds.
Yet it is the second Red Bull owned team that is drawing significant amounts of attention as Daniel Ricciardo returns full time to drive for the awkwardly named Visa Cash App Racing Bulls – formally AlphaTuari. The Aussie replaced the ill fated Nyck De Vries after just ten races in 2023 but an accident in Zandvoort saw him miss several races before returning for the end of season run in.
Ricciardo was outscored by his team mate Yuki Tsunoda in the races they competed together and further the Japanese driver won the qualifying battle by a count of 4 to 3.
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RB turnaround performance
So its not clear that Ricciardo will dominate his RB team mate this season but what has become apparent is the fact the Re Bull junior team have delivered a car much better than their offering in recent years.
Yuki Tsunoda was fourth in FP1 and demonstrated the RB 2024 challenger certainly has one lap pace….
The turnaround in RB’s fortunes is down to a redefined relationship between the Faenza based squad and its senior Milton Keynes partner. Dr. Marko announced last season that the performance of the former AlphaTauri team must improve and to that end it would be increasing its collaboration with the world champions.
In Singapore the team fitted the winning rear suspension of the RB19 and the improvement in results was immediate. Liam Lawson standing in for the injured Ricciardo qualified in P10 and went one better inn the Grand Prix scoring two points as he finished in ninth.
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From thereon AT recovered from last in the championship to challenge Williams for seventh at the final round of the season. They brought another RB19 inspired upgrade to the Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi which saw Tsunoda qualify in a remarkable P6. Only a poor race strategy saw the Japanese driver lose two places to finish P8 and with it the chance to overtake their Williams rivals.
Since then McLaren CEO Zak Brown has been complaining that the two team ownership model employed by Red Bull is unfair and should be addressed in the next Concorde agreement. Meanwhile both Red Bull, the FIA and the Rb team have affirmed no regulations are being breached I terms of illegal transfer of intellectual property.
Brown has since back tracked on any suggestion of an improper relationship between the two Red Bull owned teams but believes there are other advantages they have which are unfair to their competitors.
Each team has one vote at the F1 commission which formulates the rules for Formula One and so Red Bull here do have a clear advantage. Further, Max Verstappen was accused of impeding Yuki Tsunoda during qualifying at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, yet the AlphaTauri team representative failed to attend the stewards hearing kickstarting conspiracy theories amongst fans and pundits alike.
New Concorde agreement
Forcing Red Bull to sell their junior team is potentially something the FIA could mandate as part of the next Concorde agreement, but the world champions now find themselves a strange ally in arch rival Mercedes team boss.
When asked for his thoughts on the matter, Toto Wolff chose to emphasis the significant value Red Bull has brought to Formula One including financing a second team. Both teams entered the sport act a time when manufacturers were pulling out and it appeared one year as though there may be just eight teams competing for the championship.
“I think there is a legacy situation with Red Bull that the sport owes them a lot,” Wolff said in Bahrain this weekend.
“They have two teams, they finance them. They have a great junior program, a track and lots of brand value, and so they’re not like any other smaller team.
“So I think on the shareholder level, it’s quite a difficult discussion based on that contribution.”
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Ferrari back Red Bull
Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur questions whether banning duel F1 team ownership would change anything anyway.
“You could imagine a collaboration even if you are not owned by the same company, this is possible,” adds Vasseur. “There is a clear cut in the regulation and it is up to the FIA to decide if it is black or white. For me, this is clear and so far, it has always been respected.”
Of course Toto Wolff and Zak Brown are on opposing ends of the argument when it comes to admitting Andretti as the eleventh team. The McLaren boss has supported the application, while Wolff is vehemently against allowing Andretti into F1. So its hardly surprising Wolff choses to take the opposing stance to Brown over the red Bull duel team ownership topic.
That said Toto believes the FIA need to be on top of their game in enforcing the regulations.
F1 supremo breaks silence on Andretti snub
Wolff says two Red Bull teams ‘added value’
“We are a constructor sport, and I believe the same shareholding, same location, share of facilities, it’s clear that some ambiguity is always going be left with competitors,” Wolff cautions.
“What we need to look at is the regulations – are the regulations robust enough? Are they policed well enough for us to be in a safe place or are we seeing some potential loopholes and what is it we need for 2026?”
Toto raises the topic of the Haas F1 collaboration with ferrari which is clearly more of a dependent relationship than is the case for the Red Bull junior team.
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Battle for top 5 in RB sights
“That is the main question – define regulations that make everyone comfortable with the situation from the small teams that use such collaboration like Haas, it’s going to be very difficult for them to stand on their own feet, to the teams that have no relationships to the big teams, all the way on the other end that have joined shareholding and same locations.
“I believe that is the thing we need to be tackling, that everybody is fine with the situation.”
Meanwhile in the final practice before the first qualifying session of the year, we saw 14 cars within 0.9 seconds over one lap pace and all eyes will be on the Racing Bulls to see if they can displace one of the top five favourite F1 outfits.
READ MORE: FIA powerless to intervene in Horner saga
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