Q: I will start by admitting that I am a big Red Bull and Max Verstappen fan, and believe this most recent championship stamps him as an all-time great because it looked like he carried a car for a better part of the season. He “Max-imizes” every weekend.
Having said that, I wanted to get your thoughts on the main cause for Red Bull’s fast start and then early-midseason drop-off in pace? I know the team did not stand on its laurels from last year and just evolve last year’s car; it seemed to go pretty radical on some design changes. At the same time, there also seemed to be some quiet rumors about the FIA making a substantive change to the rules relating to asymmetrical braking system around Miami. Red Bull was rumored to be using the system (which frankly I think is brilliant idea and what I love about F1).
Was it the radical design changes they only have lately started to come to grips with? Other cars evolving better than the Red Bull? The asymmetrical braking system ban? Or all of the above?
Jeff Smith, State College, PA
CM: I don’t buy into any braking system issue, because if Red Bull had been breaking any rules then rival teams would have been up in arms about it, and if Red Bull hadn’t been but just had to make changes then Christian Horner certainly would have claimed that the team was being unfairly penalized.
I think we’ve seen just how impressive last season was from Red Bull, when every single item it brought to the car had a big impact on its performance in a positive way. Other teams fluctuated, and Aston Martin’s competitive start shows how the rest of the field was still getting things wrong.
Once McLaren started getting on top of its car mid-season last year, it was on a trajectory to challenge Red Bull, where the headspace for improvements was smaller. Ferrari too started making gains, just not as big, but the signs were there.
Red Bull then made a good step forward with its 2024 car, and Ferrari wasn’t a million miles away at that stage either, but McLaren was just late with its development. What it had learned in 2023 put it on a path that it couldn’t have ready in time for the start of 2024 but was worth waiting for, and team principal Andrea Stella suggested as much pre-season. So when the upgrade landed in Miami, you saw that instant step into competitiveness with Red Bull.
What made it all seem much more dramatic at that stage was Red Bull stopped getting the expected value out of a mid-season upgrade. Mercedes technical director James Allison even called it a downgrade, and Red Bull sources admit there was a need to stop and understand what wasn’t working. That slowed overall development, and in F1 the old adage is if you stand still, you go backwards.
The cost cap and limited wind tunnel time have also played a big role here. Red Bull couldn’t throw endless money at trying to understand the issue, or at further developments. Resources originally planned for upgrades suddenly get redirected into troubleshooting and finding remedies.
Part of me is a little sad that McLaren didn’t start the year quite as strongly as it would have with its Miami upgrade, because not only would that have limited the early Red Bull dominance, that too would likely have given Ferrari a smaller deficit that it would have been trying to erase late in the season.
It’s been a great season and Verstappen has certainly maximized his opportunities to wrap up the title early, but an all-time classic could be on the cards in 2025.
Q: My family and I have become big fans of Yuki Tsunoda. He just seems so different from the typical F1 driver in an amusing way. What isn’t amusing is that he seems to be an afterthought for Red Bull. I know Japanese drivers have not entered the sport without backing from Honda or Toyota. But Yuki has been beating his teammates, and it still took nagging from Honda to get him what sounds like a token offer of a test in a Red Bull at the end of the season.
Is there a general sentiment in F1 that Japanese drivers are only there to please the Japanese manufacturer and can never stand on their own merits? I think Yuki may be the first Japanese F1 driver whose driving earns him a place in a team regardless of the engine manufacturer. Why does the F1 world not seem to value his talent?
Bary
CM: I’m a big fan of Yuki too, Bary! I don’t think there’s an F1 sentiment there that Japanese drivers can’t stand on their own merits, because if you look at someone like Kamui Kobayashi who went before Yuki, he came in through Toyota but was then snapped up quickly by Sauber when Toyota pulled out of F1, and he remained a popular target for teams for a number of seasons.
I believe Yuki is a casualty of Honda’s decision to pull out. That led to Red Bull developing its own powertrain department and having to find a solution for 2026 to try and remain competitive, and was a major obstacle. Huge investment has been made and it’s undertaking a massive challenge, but then Honda quickly decided it was coming back in 2026 with Aston Martin.
That will have stung Red Bull, and Yuki’s backing from Honda might mean that instead of Red Bull supporting him, it is far less keen to promote a Honda driver.
Plus, there is part of me that is pragmatic about the fact he would be a very different teammate to Max Verstappen than Sergio Perez has been, and creating an environment that works best for Verstappen will be Red Bull’s priority. Tsunoda could well do a great job for Red Bull, but he’s still shown flashes of petulance — that he admits he needs to keep working on — that might just stop him making a case that can’t be ignored.
Q: Max winning the championship in a car that’s probably going finish third in the constructors’ is impressive, but I think it’s worth pointing out though that in 1982 Keke Rosberg had three different teammates and in 1983 Piquet’s teammate only finished five races.
I think it terms of raw race pace, the ’82 Williams, ’83 Brabham, and this year’s Red Bull were probably better than the third-best car and that the second driver(s) all really underperformed what the car was capable of.
If you were a F1 driver, with hindsight, at the start of this year you would still want to be in the Red Bull, right?
Will, Indy
CM: I’d argue that the fact there’s only two previous occasions that this has happened shows how rare it is that a car can be so tough to drive that one driver would underperform to such an extent, and therefore how impressive it still is to be successful even in a quick car when there are multiple competitors capable of winning races.
I’m sure we could also pick out other times that drivers in even slower cars came close to winning a title, or won one and the team still finished in the top two because other teams underperformed, but over the course of a season it generally tends to all average out.
I love your final question though, Will, because I don’t think it’s an easy one to answer. Maybe you do still just lean towards the Red Bull, but look at what Perez has done this year compared to last year, and how regularly there have been chances to win races for either McLaren or Ferrari drivers.
If you’re Verstappen and you had that hindsight of the entire season, I genuinely don’t know which car you’d pick. Don’t forget he was perhaps one dry race in Brazil away from having his title hopes significantly dented, and could still end the year with a relatively small advantage over Lando Norris if McLaren performs as expected at the last two rounds.
I’m unsure about a Ferrari, but I do think Verstappen still wins the title this year in a McLaren, although partly because he’s not competing against himself in the Red Bull! The hypothetical of who would have been in the Red Bull at the start of the season becomes another fascinating aspect of your question.
THE FINAL WORD
From Robin Miller’s Mailbag, November 24, 2015
Q: I watched “Winning: The racing life of Paul Newman” the other night, and I recommend it to anyone interested in racing or PLN. It got me thinking about non-racers, mostly actors, who attempted to drive and how good some of them were. Certainly people of our age, Robin, know about Newman, James Garner and of course Steve McQueen. I know Newman and McQueen had success in the pro ranks and I know Garner had a race team (if you get a chance to see his movie about his team, it is worth seeing) and he was the only actor that did his own driving in Grand Prix. I know Tommy Smothers was a racer as well.
Later on, Bruce Jenner had a credible racing career and had pro wins, and younger folks will remember Frankie Muniz giving it a try and Jason Priestly, who was doing a good job before his big crash. Now we have Patrick Dempsey and he has proven to have the right stuff. My question is, who do you think is the best of the pack that tried racing, and who do you know that was good that I left out? I am thinking four national championships and a class win at Le Mans is going to be hard to beat.
Tom in Waco
ROBIN MILLER: It has to be PLN hands down, although McQueen was decent on dirt bikes and Smothers ran Formula 5000 or Formula A and was credible. James Dean evidently had some chops in sports car racing while Gene Hackman tried sprint cars in Danville, Ill., and Kent McCord of “Adam 12” fame ran little sedans and sports cars for many years and did OK. Muniz was making strides and Priestley nearly died in an Indy Lights car, but Priestley seems to have had the right stuff like Newman.