Max Verstappen says the off-track controversies surrounding Red Bull are not distracting from performances, after taking another comfortable victory in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Red Bull repeated its one-two finish from the first race in Bahrain …
Max Verstappen says the off-track controversies surrounding Red Bull are not distracting from performances, after taking another comfortable victory in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Red Bull repeated its one-two finish from the first race in Bahrain with a similar display in Jeddah, although Charles Leclerc took the point for the fastest lap as he finished third. The result comes amid a backdrop of infighting at Red Bull — with Helmut Marko stating his own future was uncertain on Friday and Verstappen backing the Austrian — but the championship leader is impressed with how resilient the team has proven to be.
“I always said that what is most important is that we work together as a team and that everyone keeps the peace,” Verstappen said. “And that’s what we, I think, all agree on within the team. So hopefully from now on that is also fully the case. Everyone is trying to focus in the same direction.
“And I think the positive out of all this is that it didn’t hurt our performances. So it’s a very strong team. I think also mentally, what you can see from not only [the] driver’s side, but also mechanics, engineers, everyone is there to do their job. I think everyone, even when there is stuff going on or whatever, they’re just very focused on their job as they should be.”
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Verstappen’s victory is his 19th in the past 20 races and sees him reach three figures in terms of podiums, but he jokes that the landmark in his 188th race means he’s missed out on too many.
“It’s 88 missed podiums!” he quipped. “No, of course, very happy with that. But I’m not really a guy looking at the stats, so I’m just happy to hit 100, but I want to continue and just focus race-by-race on achieving the best possible result all the time.
“I think it was a very good race. Of course, after that first stint with the safety car, we had to box. I knew that it was going to be a very long stint to the end, but it was the same for most of us. I think we just managed the pace very well to the end.
“The whole weekend, the car has been performing really well, probably a little bit better than expected, even. And yeah, overall, very pleased to win here.”
Max Verstappen led another comfortable Red Bull Racing one-two after dominating the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Verstappen lost the lead only during the first pit stop window, caused by Lance Stroll breaking his left-front suspension with a tap of the …
Max Verstappen led another comfortable Red Bull Racing one-two after dominating the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Verstappen lost the lead only during the first pit stop window, caused by Lance Stroll breaking his left-front suspension with a tap of the apex barrier at Turn 22, sending him careering into the barriers on the opposite side of the circuit. The ensuing safety car triggered all but four remaining drivers to make their sole mandatory pit stops for the hard tire, which could comfortably make it to the end of the 50-lap grand prix.
Lando Norris inherited the lead ahead of Verstappen, but it was never going to last. After bringing his tires up to temperature for a long final stint, the reigning champion made quick work of the McLaren on lap 13, after which he was never sighted on the way to his 100th grand prix podium.
“Overall, of course a fantastic weekend for the whole team but also for myself,” he said. “I felt really good in the car.
“We had good pace all around and we could manage it quite well with the gap also. Overall I’m very, very pleased.”
Verstappen also claimed Red Bull Racing’s 115th victory, taking the team one past Williams on the list of constructors winners to outright third behind Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.
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Sergio Perez had been running second before the safety car intervention but lost two places stacking behind Verstappen. He dropped to fourth behind Norris and Lewis Hamilton, who had also stayed out, and took eight laps to pass both, enough to put him out of touch with Verstappen after resuming one-two formation.
His pace was great enough to completely negate a five-second penalty levied for an unsafe release ahead of Fernando Alonso in the hectic pit lane during the first stop window.
“We definitely made good progress,” Perez said. “It was quite a compromised race with the safety car there so early.
“Overall it’s a great day for the team. It’s a very different track to Bahrain and we keep being strong. We just have to keep this momentum going.”
Charles Leclerc started from the front row, but the RB20’s superior straight-line speed had Perez through after only four laps.
The Monegasque followed the Mexican back up into the podium places after the safety car but was no match for him, and he finished 10 seconds behind the leading two at the flag before Perez’s penalty was applied. Leclerc also picked up a bonus point for fastest lap
“Overall the feeling was pretty good,” he said. “It was a bit of a boring race, because Red Bull was a bit too quick and behind we had a bit of a gap, but we took the maximum points we could today, and that was the target, so that was great.”
Oscar Piastri appeared to have the pace to duel with Leclerc for the final podium place but couldn’t follow the Ferrari past Hamilton despite the tire offset.
Hamilton’s Mercedes had significantly better straight-line speed than the McLaren, with even Piastri’s DRS doing little to get him to within striking distance.
It took Hamilton making his eventual stop on lap 36 for Piastri to get through after several failed attempts at the first chicane, but by then he was 10s behind the Russell, locking him into fourth place.
Fernando Alonso finished fifth after a long race defending ahead of George Russell.
Oliver Bearman finished a sensational seventh on debut for Ferrari, gaining four places on his starting position and fending off Norris and Hamilton on faster tires at the end of the race.
The Briton was called up to replace Carlos Sainz, who was suffering appendicitis, shortly before final practice but held himself well in the grand prix, making few mistakes and never appearing overwhelmed by his sudden chance at one of the calendar’s most testing circuits.
Norris and Hamilton pitted late for fresh softs but couldn’t extract the expected pace from the red-marked tires, finishing eighth and ninth.
Nico Hulkenberg scored the final point after an excellent exercise in teamwork at Haas. Hulkenberg had stayed out during the safety car while teammate Kevin Magnussen pitted, but the Dane rapidly accumulated 20 seconds of penalties, one for causing a collision with Alex Albon and another for passing Yuki Tsunoda off the track.
The team switch him to a defensive strategy, using him to hold up the midfield with some superb defensive driving to build a gap into which Hulkenberg could pit on lap 33. The German rejoined the race in net 10th place, just 2.3s ahead of the relentless Magnussen, to collect Haas’s first point of the year.
Magnussen dropped to 12th after his penalties, promoting Alex Albon to 11th ahead of Esteban Ocon and Yuki Tsunoda in 13th and 14th after a tight race-long duel between the trio.
Logan Sargeant finished ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, whose race was undone by a super long stop that left him trailing far behind the safety car pack early in the race, and Sauber teammates Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu at the back of the pack.
Pierre Gasly was the race’s only other retirement, pitting at the end of the first lap with a suspected gearbox problem.
Jos Verstappen has further upped the ante in the ongoing power struggle within Red Bull Racing by saying Christian Horner (pictured with Verstappen Sr., above) needs to be replaced as team principal, or the team “will explode.” The father of …
Jos Verstappen has further upped the ante in the ongoing power struggle within Red Bull Racing by saying Christian Horner (pictured with Verstappen Sr., above) needs to be replaced as team principal, or the team “will explode.”
The father of three-time world champion Max Verstappen, Jos — himself a Formula 1 racer in the 1990s and early ’00s — has been a constant presence throughout his son’s career and is regularly on-site at races within Red Bull, although he is not an employee of the team. A grievance against Horner’s alleged inappropriate behavior towards a female colleague was dismissed after an independent investigation last week, but messages and images purporting to be evidence from the investigation were circulated to senior Formula 1 figures and media the following day.
In a show of unity, Horner walked into the paddock hand-in-hand with his wife Geri on Sunday, and was joined on the grid by Red Bull GmbH majority shareholder Chalerm Yoovidhya, but Jos Verstappen says Horner’s position is untenable.
“There is tension here while he remains in position,” Verstappen Sr. told the British tabloid the Daily Mail. “The team is in danger of being torn apart. It can’t go on the way it is. It will explode. He is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems.”
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RACER understands there was a heated exchange between Verstappen Sr. and Red Bull team members including Horner on Friday night in Bahrain, But when asked about claims that he is behind a campaign to remove the team principal, Verstappen said: “That wouldn’t make sense. Why would I do that when Max is doing so well here?”
Verstappen Jr. won Sunday’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix to secure his 55th career victory — all achieved with Red Bull — and ensure he has not been headed in the drivers’ championship since May 2022. Given his and the team’s recent form, the Dutchman is a heavy favorite to win a fourth championship in a row.
In response to Verstappen Sr.’s comments, a Red Bull Racing spokesperson told RACER: “There are no issues here. The team are united and we are focused on racing.”
Horner had insisted his full focus is on Red Bull’s on-track performance, after starting the season with a one-two result, but acknowledged he has been facing opposition following the conclusion of the investigation.
“My focus is on racing,” Horner said. “What people choose to write is up to them. But my focus coming out of this weekend is on the next race in seven days’ time in Saudi Arabia.
“I’m not going to comment on what motives, whatever person may have for doing this. My focus is on this team, my family, my wife and going racing. I have the support of an incredible family, of an incredible wife, of an incredible team and everybody within that team and my focus is on going racing and winning races and doing the best that I can.
“You can see what it meant to the whole team. Better to do your talking on-track.”
It’s looking like another rough F1 season as Max Verstappen dominated again in in the desert to open the season Saturday.
The reigning champion will not be denied.
The Bahrain Grand Prix was held on Saturday and not Sunday, but the song remained the same regardless of the day — Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was crowned the winner, and he won by a lot.
Verstappen finished the race 22 seconds ahead of teammate Sergio Perez to take both the first win of 2024 and his eighth win in a row going back to last season, two away from tying his own record. The podium was rounded out by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who had a great race in competition with his teammate Charles Leclerc — see how the full race turned out below:
The race was a rather droll affair all around, as Verstappen’s dominance was combined with a lack of safety cars or retirements from the entire grid. The two most interesting elements of the day both came from in-fighting via Ferrari and Visa Cashapp RB.
Leclerc appeared to have a massive problem with brake imbalance across the race, locking up constantly at hard-braking corners. This not only led to him dropping from second to fourth by the end of the race, but it allowed Sainz to take advantage, overtaking Leclerc twice to end up on the podium.
Meanwhile, the VCARB cars of Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo were in the spotlight due to team orders to swap the two cars while Tsunoda was fighting Kevin Magnussen of Haas for 12th place. Tsunoda initially ignored the order but eventually completed the swap, but he also appeared to divebomb Ricciardo during the in-lap when the race was over.
Red Bull’s next race is in Jeddah for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix next Saturday, and it will likely be more of the same as Verstappen pilots by far the fastest car on the grid.
Max Verstappen says the field is closer in 2024 than last year despite dominating the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. The Dutchman led from pole and was never threatened as he beat teammate Sergio Perez by over 22s in Bahrain, with Carlos Sainz …
Max Verstappen says the field is closer in 2024 than last year despite dominating the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
The Dutchman led from pole and was never threatened as he beat teammate Sergio Perez by over 22s in Bahrain, with Carlos Sainz keeping the second Red Bull honest. Verstappen’s pace advantage was over three quarters of a second per lap in the early stages, but he says the performance at the first race was due to the team executing perfectly.
“I think that, in general, other teams are closer,” Verstappen said. “I just think that today, everything just worked really, really well, and I don’t expect that to happen every single grand prix in the near future. So still, we take it, we look back at it, of course, we analyze it, and we’ll try to improve further.
“I don’t know how they approach their long runs, you know, with fuel loads and whatever. But from our side, it was definitely not expected to be half a second ahead. But yeah, it was probably a bit better than I thought today.”
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Verstappen had taken pole position on Friday night but was closely challenged in that session — with Charles Leclerc’s Q2 lap the quickest of the session — and he believes that shows how conditions can make a difference.
“I do think that we are just not that great on one lap performance for whatever reason with the car, but luckily it’s very good in the race for most tracks,” he said. “Of course you focus a little bit more on the race, but it just seems like other teams can maybe extract a little bit more over one lap than us for whatever reason, so that’s what we’ll look at for the coming races.
“But I really think that also just the circumstances today with the wind helped us out a bit more compared to the last two days, so probably it was not in our favor with how the car is responding at the moment.
“I think today everything just went really well. The balance, the feeling for myself and the car is not always like that. I mean, sometimes you win races, but you may be not very happy with how you were feeling with the car or the balance of the car. But today that was all very good.”
Max Verstappen says he has full faith in Christian Horner, calling the Red Bull team principal “an incredible team boss” after taking pole position at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Horner was the subject of an independent investigation instigated by Red …
Max Verstappen says he has full faith in Christian Horner, calling the Red Bull team principal “an incredible team boss” after taking pole position at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Horner was the subject of an independent investigation instigated by Red Bull GmbH at the start of this year, with the grievance against him being dismissed on Wednesday. However, with Thursday seeing materials purporting to be evidence from the investigation circulated to senior Formula 1 figures and media, the situation has remained under scrutiny, but Verstappen continued to back the 50-year-old.
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“Listen, when I look at how Christian operates within the team, he has been an incredible team boss, so absolutely, from the performance side of things, you can’t even question that,” Verstappen said. “So that’s what I’m also dealing with.
“I speak to Christian a lot, and also throughout the weekend here, he’s fully committed to the team; he’s also here for the performance. Of course probably a little bit distracted. But we just focus on the performance side of things, and that’s how we all work together.”
Horner took part in specific meetings with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem ahead of qualifying, but Verstappen says it hasn’t been a distraction for the team.
“From my side — and I think what I can see also from the mechanics and the engineers — we are fully focused on the car and the performance here during the weekend. That’s how it should be, I think, and that’s what we continue to do, because it’s not our business — we’re not particularly involved in that. We are here, we are paid to do our job, and that’s what we are doing and that’s also what we love doing. So that’s what we focus on.”
After securing pole position to kick off his title defense, Verstappen believes he’s facing a season where there will be multiple challengers in qualifying.
“I think it was just a very tight qualifying. I think it was just also very tricky conditions with the wind this whole weekend. Just if you can get the lap together immediately, you can find one, one and a half tenths in a corner, and I think it was good for us in Q2, Q3 — especially Q3 I would say, it improved a little bit more.
“But I think throughout the whole of qualifying, you could see the gaps were super close, and I think you never really knew who was going to be on pole heading into Q3. So I think that was very exciting to see.”
You can’t pick a guaranteed testing order based on lap times, and this week in Bahrain showed exactly why. Look at the headline laps and you see Carlos Sainz sitting at the top of by quite some distance, with his day two time of 1m29.921s leaving …
You can’t pick a guaranteed testing order based on lap times, and this week in Bahrain showed exactly why.
Look at the headline laps and you see Carlos Sainz sitting at the top of by quite some distance, with his day two time of 1m29.921s leaving him 0.4s ahead of his teammate Charles Leclerc. But both Ferrari drivers set their best laps on the softer C4 compound tire that won’t even be used during the race weekend in seven days’ time, gaining an advantage of around half a second over those who stuck to the C3.
Even so, that would mean the best C3 time of a 1m30.679s set by Sergio Perez doesn’t totally erase the tire offset, but there’s little to suggest there is any team other than Red Bull in serious contention for victory when the paddock reconvenes for next weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
“I think 19 drivers in the paddock now will think that [they] will not win the championship,” Fernando Alonso admitted on Friday, despite optimism within Aston Martin that it has cemented last year’s step forward. “It happens 99% of the time in your career. This is a brutal sport.
“It’s difficult to tell now [if Aston has a race-winning car]. I would say, I think after seeing Max [Verstappen] and the Red Bull two days ago there are less chances for everyone else to win a race this year. But this is how it is.”
After a mighty first day, Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing seemed to be flying under the radar with their new RB20. Motorsport Images
It might seem odd to be pointing to the opening day given the fact Verstappen’s best lap was 1.4 seconds slower than the best from Sainz 24 hours later, but the first day is traditionally spent scanning new cars, raising and lowering the ride heights dramatically and gathering as much aero data as possible.
And the RB20 was definitely a car that needed those kinds of duties carrying out, given the dramatic departure from its predecessor that it is. Technical director Pierre Wache admitted to me on the opening day that it was “a big risk” to change the car so much after the dominance of the RB19, but that it was required to stop rivals catching up.
So for Verstappen to go 1.1s clear of the field when doing that initial work on Wednesday, on a track that did not have the grip levels that would increase by the end of the week, and end up with a lap time that at least tire-corrected was within half a second of the fastest on the final day, hints at some serious raw pace.
Traditionally, teams that note such an advantage early on also tend to then ensure they don’t confirm it to the world or give away its full extent, and will run with particularly high fuel loads or detuned engine modes to slow themselves down.
Its rivals certainly believed that to be the case, with estimates varying from a half-second advantage (from Williams) to a full second (from Mercedes), and others sitting in between.
“I’ve no idea [where McLaren is], but honestly definitely quite a chunk behind Ferrari and quite a chunk behind Red Bull — I think they’re clearly a long way ahead,” Lando Norris said after a greatly improved showing from McLaren compared to the past two years.
“Apart from that we’re still not in a bad position; we’re probably just around that next pack, but those two teams definitely seem to have a decent advantage over everyone else.”
Carlos Sainz (pictured) and Charles Leclerc both put up strong times with the Ferrari SF-24 but the varying conditions and setups limited their meaning. Andy Hone/Motorsport Images
The Ferrari pace is no surprise, either, with Sainz admitting he would actually have been shocked if the SF-24 wasn’t capable of at least threatening Red Bull’s headline times. Last year Ferrari took more pole positions than Red Bull in the second half of the season, but tire degradation was the concern, as was the car’s sensitivity to wind.
The test offered the chance to analyze both, with Fred Vasseur confirming a step forward on the race simulations and not being drawn into trying to judge the gap to Red Bull due to fuel load discrepancies.
“About the order of performance, I think it is too early to draw any conclusions because I think it is quite tight,” Vasseur said. “For ten kilos of fuel, you will move from P2 to P6 or P7, which means the most important thing is to focus on yourself, to have a good feedback from the drivers and so far their feeling is good.
“Very difficult to know [Red Bull’s advantage] because we don’t know if they are running the car with 20 kilos or 80 kilos, but this is 2.5s difference and it means it is very difficult to draw any conclusions. They did a race simulation but it was a different approach; they did one yesterday but it was much earlier than Carlos with a different track, so it is difficult to know. We will focus on ourselves and find out in one week’s time.”
The fact that Vasseur didn’t attempt to put the pressure on Red Bull by declaring it a clear favorite — as Leclerc did regularly during the week — could hint at Ferrari confidence that it has a strong car, but then many teams can claim the same, even if Red Bull has moved the goalposts.
Mercedes left the test buoyed by its drivers’ feedback about the handling of their new W15, but whether that will be enough to get them further toward to the front remains unclear. Steven Tee/Motorsport Images
Mercedes rarely caught the eye on track, but off it the drivers’ comments were telling and backed up from an engineering standpoint when trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin was willing to declare the 2024 car a greatly improved foundation to build from.
“We’ve had three useful days here in Bahrain and managed to make good progress understanding the W15,” Shovlin said. “Compared to last year’s car, the feedback from the drivers is very different and more positive, which is encouraging. The team has worked hard to iron out the handling flaws that were integral to the W14, and it’s great that we seem to have put a number of those problems behind us.
“Over the course of the test we’ve made good steps on our understanding of the car. The task of the next few days is to pick through the results and put together the best package to take into the race weekend.
“It’s never easy to make predictions on pace from testing, as all teams are quite effective at hiding their pace when they want to. It’s clear that we are in a much better position than 12 months ago, though.”
Just another reminder that it’s not always just about the lap times. Red Bull will more than likely emerge with some sort of clear advantage in the opening round, but ahead of a stronger chasing pack that doesn’t appear to have major issues to solve: The Mercedes is more driver friendly, the Ferrari kinder to its tires, the McLaren starting where it finished last year and the Aston Martin impressively evolved.
A smaller gap to Red Bull than some of the more dramatic team predictions would help, but if any one of them can make strides in the development race, then it still could be a more competitive year than 2023.
But as Alonso pointed out, those day one signs from Verstappen are proving tough to ignore.
Max Verstappen lay down an early marker for Red Bull with comfortably the fastest time on the opening day of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain. The three-time world champion has won those titles in consecutive seasons with increasing …
Max Verstappen lay down an early marker for Red Bull with comfortably the fastest time on the opening day of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain.
The three-time world champion has won those titles in consecutive seasons with increasing dominance, taking victory in 19 of the 22 races last year. Handed a new concept in the form of the RB20 with radically different sidepods and engine cover solutions compared to its predecessor — something technical director Pierre Wache admits is a “risk” — Verstappen enjoyed the ideal start to his title defense.
Alongside George Russell in the Mercedes, Verstappen was one of two drivers to complete the entire day and amassed 143 laps while also setting a fastest time more than a second clear of the rest of the field. The RB20 looked to be a slight handful early on, but it was soon the class of the field on track, notably allowing Verstappen to get on the throttle earlier and more aggressively than any other car.
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The closest team was McLaren, with Lando Norris second fastest but 1.140s adrift of Verstappen’s best lap on the same C3 compound tire. It was the C3 that was used by all but two drivers — Alex Albon on the softer C4 and Esteban Ocon on the harder C1 — to post their quickest times.
Norris was running Gil de Ferran’s Indy 500-winning helmet design in tribute to his former McLaren colleague, and aside from the gap to Red Bull had a largely encouraging start to pre-season. Oscar Piastri’s 57 laps made it a total of 130 for the team, with only Verstappen and Haas managing significantly more.
Carlos Sainz was third quickest after taking over from Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, who had been second in the morning session. Track conditions tend to be better under the floodlights as temperatures drop, with running ending at 7pm local time, and the top six times all coming in the final part of the day.
Fourth fastest was Daniel Ricciardo in the Visa Cash App RB (VCARB), just 0.015s behind Sainz and looking solid early in pre-season, while Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll rounded out the top six – the latter 1.6s off Verstappen.
On a day when there were no red flags. Stroll did cause one moment of drama when his left wing mirror fell off on the pit straight in the final hour of running. Ricciardo was close behind the Aston Martin but managed to swerve away from the debris at the last moment, but Nico Hulkenberg wasn’t quite so alert and shattered the mirror with his left-front wheel.
The incident didn’t impact Hulkenberg’s running though, as he completed 82 laps in the afternoon to go with Kevin Magnussen’s 66 in the morning. That total of 148 was the highest of any team, although the fastest Haas lap time was a second off the pace of the next -slowest car in Ocon on hard tires.
Testing is often tough to read but if pace is a concern for Haas after day one — something the team was pre-warning over the winter — Williams has a bigger worry after suffering with reliability issues.
Albon was only able to complete 40 laps in the first half of the day after having to return to the garage with a concern and then stopping when Williams tried to run again. The team did get Logan Sargeant out relatively soon after the lunch break but following a spin for the American at the tricky Turn 9, he too was soon confined to the pits and didn’t re-emerge as Williams investigated a suspected driveshaft issue, with only 61 laps in total possible.
For most other teams, there was largely trouble-free running but less of a clear picture of competitiveness, with Russell’s 122 laps for Mercedes relatively positive but a best time 2.7s off Verstappen in 12th place not hinting at raw performance at this very early stage.
Sergio Perez says Christian Horner “is a key player” in Red Bull’s success amid speculation regarding the team principal’s future. Red Bull GmbH – the global company that owns Red Bull Racing – has commissioned an independent investigation after …
Sergio Perez says Christian Horner “is a key player” in Red Bull’s success amid speculation regarding the team principal’s future.
Red Bull GmbH — the global company that owns Red Bull Racing — has commissioned an independent investigation after allegations of inappropriate behavior from Horner within the team. Horner reiterated his denial of the allegations, telling British newspapers, “I’m confident in [my innocence]. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be here,” during the RB20 launch, and Perez wants the team to help maintain continuity.
“Well, I think we just want to go racing,” Perez said. “We want the whole team to stay together because we’ve been so successful, and he will be able to just keep the whole team together and focus on racing.
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“Obviously there are some things out there, but the most important is we stick together as a team. We work well, and the main goal [is] remembering we are here for racing — we are a race team and we love it… and we know that Christian is a key player in our organization.
“Like I say, it’s important all of us focus on what we’re here to do, and what we’re here to do is to win championships and bring the team as forward as possible and that has to be the target for all of us in this organization.”
Horner insisted he will be in Bahrain for the pre-season test and first race despite the ongoing investigation, while also outlining his achievements in charge of Red Bull.
“I’m absolutely committed to this team,” Horner said. “I’ve been here since the beginning. I’ve built this team. There have been highs and lows along the way. We have won 113 races, seven drivers’ world championships, six constructors’ world championships, in 19 seasons. And you know, that’s in the history books now but it’s what lies ahead that’s important. So my focus is on the future.”
Red Bull has become the final Formula 1 team to launch its 2024 car, saying it has been brave in choosing to change concept with the RB20 despite last year’s dominant season. The RB19 was an evolution of the previous year’s championship winner and …
Red Bull has become the final Formula 1 team to launch its 2024 car, saying it has been brave in choosing to change concept with the RB20 despite last year’s dominant season.
The RB19 was an evolution of the previous year’s championship winner and duly went on to become the most dominant car in Formula 1 history, winning all but one of the 23 races, with Max Verstappen alone picking up 19 victories. Amid those results, the car was beaten on a number of occasions in qualifying and Red Bull has opted to update its concept.
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While the all-important floor naturally remains unseen, the engine cover features a Mercedes-style approach while team principal Christian Horner says there are some significant innovations included.
“It’s not tactical, it’s based on performance and what we’re seeing through our simulation tools,” Horner said. “Obviously the car looks quite visibly different in certain areas to last year. Only the stopwatch will tell but in the virtual world we wouldn’t have committed it to design if we didn’t feel it was better.
“It’s marginal gains in all areas, so you’re constantly looking to try and evolve. If you look at the detail on the car there’s some really exquisite detail. And I think the team… there’s been no complacency. They’ve continued to evolve, to push the boundaries.
“I think there’s some great innovation on the car as well, which will no doubt get scrutinized over the coming weeks. Creativity has been strong in the team and you can see that in some of the solutions that they’ve come up with. It’s not a conservative evolution — there’s some great innovation on this car.”
Max Verstappen says he was surprised when he first saw the 2024 concept but has full faith in Red Bull’s approach.
“I’m quite happy with the direction that they chose,” Verstappen said. “I saw the drawings I think in Abu Dhabi, the last race, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s quite different in a way.’ They’ve not been conservative, let’s say it like that. I think what I like about the team is that we had a great package, but they took the chance to really go all out and try to make it better.
“Of course, time will tell if it’s really, really good. From what I see within the team, everyone is just happy with what they have achieved in the winter. But then again, we don’t know. We can’t control what the other people did.
“I think it’s controlled aggressiveness. It doesn’t seem like it’s a question mark of what they’ve done, like, they’re not entirely sure.”
Perez believes the changes are a sign of how much Red Bull wants to maintain the recent advantage it has had.
“It just shows the hunger that we have,” Perez said. “We have such a dominant car last year that you wouldn’t expect us to change the concept that much, you know? I think it is really brave from Red Bull to do. It just shows how much this team is looking to move forward and push all the boundaries.”
