For Red Bull’s nine rivals in Formula 1, there is a mixture of hope and realism that the sport’s dominant team can be beaten this season.
Last year, Red Bull and its pioneering driver Max Verstappen rewrote the record books by defending the constructors’ and drivers’ titles.
Ahead of the new season, which starts with the Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday, Verstappen said his achievements would be “very difficult for the top, but that’s not our aim. It’s about trying to deliver another very competitive car.”
Since the introduction of new aerodynamic regulations in 2022, designed to help one car follow another more closely and aid overtaking, Red Bull has won 38 of 44 Grands Prix. In 2023, Verstappen set the record for most wins in a season, 19 out of 22 races.
The belief of many team managers and technical directors is that with the current regulations the limits can only be pushed so far and Red Bull will be caught.
“Inevitably, when you have a team doing as well as Red Bull from 2022, there will be some sort of convergence in their solutions,” said Dan Fallows, Aston Martin’s technical director. “We take the approach that Red Bull is absolutely victorious. That’s what we’re after, that’s what we’re aiming for. We focus on them.”
Last season, Red Bull were beaten twice, by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz in the Singapore Grand Prix and by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in the Qatar sprint race. Piastri’s team-mate Lando Norris said it was possible Red Bull and Verstappen could be beaten at a Grand Prix this year, but questioned whether they could lose their championships.
“If you ask, ‘Are they beatable?’, you’d have to say yes, and we’ll want to believe in saying yes, because we were very close at times last season, and we beat them at times,” he said.
“If the question is, ‘Can we beat them in a season?’, that’s going to be the challenge and I think it’s going to be very difficult to do with how well they’re performing.”
After showing improvements at McLaren at the Austrian and Singapore Grands Prix last year, Norris has scored more points than any other driver apart from Verstappen in the last 14 races.
Andrea Stella, the McLaren team principal, expects Red Bull to maintain their advantage but hopes the gap can be closed.
“If we maintain the growth rate we had in 2023, we can be in a strong position,” he said. “Whether that’s enough to challenge Red Bull and the other top teams, who will certainly have made good improvements, we’ll find out.”
Verstappen dominated last season to such an extent that his record for most points in a season, 575, was enough to win the constructors’ title by himself. Second place Mercedes scored 409.
Mercedes, like Ferrari, has revamped its car for this season. Mercedes, which won eight consecutive constructors’ championships from 2014 to 2021 before the regulation change next year, introduced a new chassis and gearbox.
Toto Wolff, the head of the Mercedes team, is a realist.
“On the one hand, you have to be realistic about the chances of beating a team that is pretty far ahead under these regulations and has done well in the last two seasons, and we haven’t,” he said. “There are no miracles in sports.
“On the other hand, our ambitions are strong. It is Red Bull and a very successful car that is the benchmark we aim to beat. I don’t know when that will happen, we don’t have a crystal ball. But we’ll find out soon enough how far the task ahead of us is.”
Lewis Hamilton, who has won six of a record seven drivers’ championships with Mercedes, is leaving the team at the end of the year for Ferrari.
Hamilton has activated a clause in his contract with Mercedes that will allow him to leave a year early. He said he was fulfilling “a childhood dream” by joining Ferrari but is determined to end his Mercedes career “on a high”.
“It would be the greatest honor to be able to help them get back on top,” Hamilton, 39, said. “I feel the most motivated and focused I’ve ever been. I never thought, at this point in my life, that I would be as hungry as I am now.”
Hamilton will partner Charles Leclerc at Ferrari in 2025. Leclerc, who signed a multi-year contract extension in the off-season, is looking to build on a strong finish from last year.
“While 2023 was a disappointing season because we weren’t fighting for the places we wanted to fight for, there was a very good reaction from the team,” Leclerc said. “The second part of the season was very good.
“Our aim is to start this season on the strong basis we finished last year and then have a similar development to put Red Bull under pressure as soon as possible.”
Team-mate Carlos Sainz, who is looking for a new team for next season after losing his place to Hamilton, said Ferrari had done everything they could to close the gap on Red Bull.
“Although Red Bull are going to come out extremely strong, Ferrari are capable of closing that gap and putting ourselves in a position to fight for more wins,” he said.
“Let’s wait until the first game to see how competitive we are and then I can tell you how many wins I think we can achieve this season.”
At the start of last season, Aston Martin started strongly, with Fernando Alonso finishing on the podium in six of the first eight races, but failing to win.
Alonso, 42, is encouraged by the words of his technical director, Fallows, that Red Bull is victorious. “It’s good that he says that,” he said. “It brings a smile to my face. We have to be optimistic about this part of the season.
“Firstly, we have to be regular in the points, fighting for the podiums, like we were last year, and if we are in that position, it would be great to get the first green win for Aston Martin. I hope to be behind the wheel at that time.”
When unveiling its RB20 car for this season, Red Bull revealed different bodywork, notably on the side skirts and engine cover.
Christian Horner, the team principal, said Adrian Newey, the chief technical officer, and his team were working hard despite their success in 2023.
“Logically, there will be convergence with fixed regulations. We can see other cars being influenced by the RB19 and we expect other teams to converge,” he said referring to last year’s car. “But the team has done a great job on the RB20. There was no complacency. They continued to evolve and push the boundaries.”
Verstappen agreed. He said the new style was “controlled aggression”.
“When I saw the drawings of the new car I said, ‘Wow! This is very different in a way,” he said. “They weren’t conservative.”
“What I like about the team is that we had a great package, but they took the opportunity to do everything and try to make it better. From what I see within the team, everyone is happy with what they have achieved over the winter. There are no question marks.”
After three days of warm-up testing in Bahrain last week, Sainz finished with the fastest time, but it is accepted that Verstappen and Red Bull will once again be the combination to beat.
