Red Bull Racing began the 2024 formula One season where they left off the previous year. Max Verstappen won the first two rounds at a canter and only a failure of his brakes at round three in Melbourne prevented the world champion from equalling his own record of ten consecutive Grand Prix victories.

Verstappen went on to collect wins at the next two weekends before a pivotal race in Miami which was to alter the face of the season thereon. McLaren brought their first big upgrade of the year to Florida and it was evident they now had the fastest race car.

Despite starting the GP in the shade of the Dolphins mega stadium in a lowly P5, Lando Norris took full advantage of a late safety car and a shortened pit stop time to claim the lead ahead of Verstappen. And as hard as he pushed, Verstappen could not close the gap to the papaya liveried car of Norris who went on to claim his maiden F1 Grand Prix.

 

 

 

F1 supremo tells Red Bull to “slow down”

Christian Horner admits it was here where the changing of the guard had begun and now in an exclusive interview with GrandPrix365 he explains where the season began to go wrong for the former world champions.

“I think it almost felt like something had changed, because suddenly we had not just one team, but three teams become very competitive and we seemed to lose competitiveness from winning races at a canter in the first four or five races,” Horner reveals.

“At that point, Stefano [Domencali] was telling me to slow down and stop winning races and sprints by 20s seconds – it was a massive shift.”

Whether Domenicali actually made the request of the Red Bull boss will in all likelihood never be known given he cold claim his comments were made in jest.

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Verstappen made all the difference

Since the advent of the latest big F1 car design rule change in 2022, Red Bull have appeared to step up to the challenge with relative ease. In the now forgotten year of 2022, Verstappen won the title winning fifteen of the Grand Prix that season.

This of course was eclipsed by Red Bull and Verstappen’s record smashing season of ’23 and even this year the gap built by race ten was sufficient to see Verstappen home over the stretch. Yet the Red Bull fall from grace came with more serious concerns as Horner explains.

“Suddenly our tools didn’t correlate with what we were seeing on track, and then that is where Max played a crucial role, because when your tools aren’t behaving, the biggest sensor and most feedback you get is from the driver.

“This year, he really rolled up his sleeves, worked tirelessly with the engineering staff to give the direction of: ‘Right, this is where we need to focus, this is where the problems are that I am experiencing and this is what we need to address.”

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Red Bull as yet failed to pinpoint problem

Horner was asked what exactly had changed post Miami but he appeared strangely in the dark stating: “That is still to be explained, but it felt like something had changed.”

F1 tech experts believe the issue stemmed from Red Bull’s first upgrade of the year in Imola where Max failed to top the timesheets in practice at all. Only a genius last lap push in Emilia-Romagne qualifying saw him pip Piastri to pole position but by less than a tenth of a second.

Verstappen went on to win the race, but was harried all the way by McLaren’s Lando Norris who finished just 0.725s behind the victor. The circuit in Imola favours track position as does Monaco and for some F1 paddock analysts this was the reason Max won the race.

The Imola upgrade confused the engineers at Red Bull Racing admits Horner and while it delivered more downforce and less drag, the window to optimise the car had shrunk.

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Wins without the fastest car the key

“We started the season with a very competitive car and then around Miami, McLaren suddenly made a step, and the upgrades we brought to Imola made the car a lot more peakier,” adds the Red Bull boss.

”Max won some big races at Imola, in Barcelona and in Montreal but we didn’t have the fastest car and he couldn’t make any mistakes and we had to be absolutely on it, operationally, and that was crucial.”

At the British Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton grabbed all the headlines given it was his first win for 56 race weekends and his championship defeat to Verstappen in ’21. Yet in variable conditions Max again proved he cold outperform his rivals and possibly his car as he hunted down Hamilton right up to the chequered flag.

It is these kinds of performances when a win was out of reach, which Horner believes saved the team and Verstappen’s hopes of his fourth consecutive championship.

Marko reveals news on new Red Bull 2025 car

 

 

 

Red Bull almost won in Silverstone

“Through the summer months, at Silverstone, we had a good race strategically, we nearly won it through the strategy, were unlucky not to win in Austria and then on the days we couldn’t win, bagging points in [Max’s] home race, in Singapore, Monza and Azerbaijan.

“It was important to capitalise on every single point that we could get and then managing to get a bit of performance back on the car for the end of the year, which Max was then able to exploit.”

This week, Dr. Hamlet Marko declared that the RB21 challenger for the 2025 campaign is now completed from a design perspective and lessons from 2024 have been considered by creating a more versatile and predictable car.

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Marko claims 2025 RB21 now completed

“I would say that the basic concept is ready,” Marko explained in an interview with Sport1.de. “The task for the engineers was to build a car that has a wider working window, one that is not so critically on the limit that it is very, very difficult for the drivers to control the car,” said the Austrian.

“That means better predictability and, if possible, as McLaren has shown, that these performances are delivered on all tracks, not just on specific tracks.”

Marko concludes the prototype RB21 is going into final production where it will then undergo significant analysis of where weight can be saved.

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McLaren boss admits Verstappen “noise” a distraction

McLaren F1 finally returned to the top of the Formula One pecking order by winning their first constructors’ title since 1998. The second oldest of the F1 teams has been in the wilderness for almost two decades as the Woking based team struggled to deal with the break up of its ‘works’ relationship with Mercedes.

The German auto brand decided to enter the sport with its own team buying Brawn GP for the 2010 season, but this meant McLaren were to lose their exclusive relationship with the power unit manufacturer in an era when raw power once again became king.

Yet the birth of the McLaren revival was first in evidence during the closing races during Verstappen’s uber dominant 2023 season, as the MCL37 closed the gap on the world champions and at times deployed the quickest car of the weekend… READ MORE