Site icon Empoword Journalism

Has the Red Bull dominance come to an end?

elisavicencio
max verstappen's red bull car

max verstappen's red bull car

Elisa Vicencio

Recent F1 races have shown the Red Bull team in potential decline. Are their recent performances enough to lead to the exit of Verstappen?

Since the changes to the technical regulations in 2022, Red Bull have proved themselves to be a dominant force. Throughout the 2023 season, the Milton Keynes based team only missed out on a singular race victory. This meant that they amassed a record-breaking total of 21 wins.

Despite Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez securing 1-2 finishes in the first two races of the season, it has been all but smooth-sailing for the reigning constructors champions.

The Threat of McLaren

For the past three seasons, Red Bull have excelled in their aerodynamic performance.

They have had a stable aerodynamic pattern with enough downforce and balance to take victory at every type of race track. Nevertheless, excluding an early title challenge from Ferrari in 2022, McLaren is the first team to pose a threat to Red Bull’s domination.

Despite Verstappen securing victories in China and Japan, this winning streak quickly came to a halt. From the Miami Grand Prix, McLaren began to emerge as a consistent challenge to Red Bull.

Although it could be argued that Norris’ Miami victory came due to a well-timed safety car that allowed him to make his first pit stop, the McLaren driver was  7.612 seconds ahead of the current World Champion at the chequered flag.

However, it was McLaren’s pace at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix that was the true indicator of just how far the Woking-based team had come.

From the start, Verstappen led the race, which in recent years would mean that the Red Bull would finish comfortably ahead of the grid. However, in a surprise to many, Norris was able to cut into Verstappen’s lead, creating a nail-bitting finish where the Red Bull driver only held onto the race win by a mere 0.725 seconds.

From this point, McLaren have gone from strength to strength. In the last nine races, at least one of their drivers have been on the podium. This not only includes Norris’ race win but also Oscar Piastri’s maiden race win in Formula One at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Red Bull’s Team Radios

In addition to changes in competitivity, both Verstappen and Red Bull have seemed less united both on and off track.

Last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix was a clear example of this. Throughout the race, Verstappen expressed his disapproval for the strategic choices of the pitwall. “It’s quite impressive how we let ourselves get undercut and just completely f**ked my race,” stated the Red Bull driver on the team radio.

“It’s childish on the radio, childish”

Additionally, when Verstappen collided with Hamilton on lap 63,  both Verstappen and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase engaged in a heated exchange.

The Red Bull driver told his engineer that Hamilton moved under braking. In response, Lambiase told Verstappen, “I’m not going to get into a radio fight with the other teams, Max. We’ll let the stewards do their thing. It’s childish on the radio, childish”.

In an interview after the race, Christian Horner, team principal of Red Bull Racing dismissed any intra-team tension.

“They’ve been together for eight years. There are things that we could have done better in the race today but it’s something we’ll talk about as a team.”

However, Verstappen continued to air his frustrations in his post-race interview.

“On a day when we’re already lacking pace compared to McLaren, you try and hope we do the right things with the strategy which today was not the case,” stated the 3-time World Champion. “I’m realistic. Today we couldn’t have beaten the McLarens, but a P3 was on the cards if we would have been on it a bit more.”

Driver Line-Up

Finally, and perhaps the main issue that has plagued the team, is that of their driver line-up.

Despite a strong start to the season for Sergio Perez, with back-to-back podiums in the first two races, he has failed to impress this season. Undettered by  his performances in recent races, in early June Red Bull announced that the 6-time race winner had signed a two-year contract extension.

Nevertheless, since this contract extension, Perez has only scored a mere 17 points compared to his teammate who has scored 96 points over the last five rounds.

Consequently, as of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Perez is 141 points behind Verstappen in seventh place. This has consequences not only for the future of Perez within the team but also in terms of the constructors championship fight.

However, it could also be the end of the reigning world champion’s time at Red Bull. Although Verstappen has a contract with the Milton Keynes-based team until 2028, internal rifts have surfaced recently. This has mainly been seen in the fractured relationship between Horner and the 3-time World Champion’s father Jos Verstappen.

Meanwhile, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has taken advantage of this situation, expressing his desire for Verstappen to join Mercedes.

“We have a slot free, the only one in the top teams – unless Max decides he goes, and the slot is not going to be free with us anymore,” stated the Mercedes CEO in March.

But only time will tell whether Wolff’s persuasions and Red Bull’s divisions will be enough for Verstappen to depart from the team that he has been with since his debut at 17 years old.

READ NEXT:

Featured image courtesy of Jen Ross via Flickr. No changes have been made to this image. Image licence found here.

Exit mobile version