Do rivals have hope against F1’s greatest escape artists?

If ever there was a year when Red Bull needed to produce the most dominant car in its history, then it was 2023. Having been found guilty last year of a breach of the cost cap en route to its 2021 drivers’ title with Max Verstappen, it knew that this season was going to be a tough one with a 10% wind tunnel/aero development penalty.

Indeed, the projected numbers that it was facing as it headed into last winter did not look great. According to F1’s Sporting Regulations, Red Bull as constructors’ champions should have been allowed 70% of the full wind tunnel running, which equates to 224 runs, for the first half of 2023.

Second-placed Ferrari would get 75% and 240 runs, with Mercedes on 80% and 256 runs. Much better off were McLaren on 90%, and Aston Martin on 100%. As the result of Red Bull’s punishment, it dropped to 63% – a 27% deficit on Mercedes, 43% down on McLaren and a whopping 59% down on Aston Martin.

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There was no getting away from the fact that if Red Bull got locked into an early season development race, or even needed to make emergency changes to a car that was not going quick enough, it was going to face an almost insurmountable challenge. There would simply not be enough hours in the tunnel needed to plot a recovery.

So, you can imagine the sense of relief at Red Bull when it became pretty clearly early on that the RB19 was awesome. And better than that, it was not the team that was needing to get some emergency running in the wind tunnel to address car problems.

Instead, while Aston Martin clearly made the most of its wind tunnel advantage to hit the ground running, the story of the start of 2023 was that all of Red Bull’s main rivals were back to the drawing board. McLaren had begun work on a car revamp before its MCL60 had even hit the track, Mercedes committed to its new W14 concept after qualifying in Bahrain, while Ferrari quickly came to the conclusion after the first few races that it needed a new direction for the SF-23.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Upgrades for the RB19 have been applied only when needed, as it proved vastly superior to the competition from the outset

As these squads all burned through their wind tunnel allocation to try to make amends for mistakes they had made over the winter, Red Bull could serenely stick to its plan of steady development while keeping its powder dry and managing its tunnel runs.

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It was also intriguing to hear Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache talk earlier this year about how, with the team knowing that it faced the wind tunnel penalty, there had perhaps been some more focused minds in ensuring that no run it did was ever wasted.

"In our situation, to be honest, it is a disadvantage for sure," he said about the penalty. "But it is an advantage to push the team to make sure that you don't explore useless stuff. The efficiency of what you look at has to be reviewed, whereas before it was not as reviewed as much.

"They take it as a personal attack, so they will do even a better job, and the motivation is even higher" Pierre Wache

"It helps us also to be hungry, because in the team and especially in the technical team, we don't understand getting this kind of penalty, because we have done a good job. They take it as a personal attack, so they will do even a better job, and the motivation is even higher. I think there is some advantage for that."

Despite Red Bull’s opposition eventually edging closer – with McLaren especially delivering a dramatic transformation – it did not have to bring any more improvements to its car than were absolutely necessary. It stuck to a plan, brought big developments exactly when needed to inject a little bit more speed to keep the opposition at bay, before quietly switching focus to the 2024 car. What an escape, considering what could have been if the opposition had all got their acts together...

As Red Bull boss Christian Horner said in Mexico: “You have to remember that since the summer break, we've really added very little performance, if anything, to the car. With the wind tunnel restrictions that we've had, we've elected to use that on RB20, next year's car, as opposed to continuing the development on RB19.”

Those words should be quite worrying for Red Bull’s rivals, because there had been talk at the start of the season of the best prospect for others winning races would be when the squad turned off its 2023 development. But the reality is that, despite all the efforts being made by other teams, the gap to the front does not appear to be much closer than it was at the start of the season. 

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Since turning its attention to 2024, only in Singapore has Red Bull been beaten in a warning sign for next year

Carlos Sainz’s victory for Ferrari in Singapore was more about Red Bull getting it wrong in qualifying than about a genuine change of form. And while Lewis Hamilton perhaps came closest of all to dethroning Verstappen on pace terms in Austin as he hunted him down in the closing laps, let us not forget that the world champion was only being reeled in because he was suffering from brake problems. Were he not battling those, he would have been miles clear ahead.

Often when teams/drivers are dominant, they never show off their full potential all the time. It’s unnecessary. There are as many points on offer for winning a race by 10 seconds as there are for lapping the entire field. And going faster to win by more just opens up the risk of pushing car parts too much or making a mistake.

It is often quite hard, therefore, to work out just how much clear a dominant team really is, beyond the flashes of speed that you get when the driver has to pull the pin and really go for it because a victory is at stake. One example earlier this year was the Australian Grand Prix, when early in the race Verstappen breezed past Lewis Hamilton for the lead on the run to Turn 9. He ended up a whopping two-seconds clear by the end of that lap as Red Bull did not want the Mercedes in DRS range.

In Mexico last week, it was a similar tale as we saw glimpses of Verstappen having to unleash a bit more than normal after the restart as he attempted to keep Hamilton at bay. On the slower, harder tyres that were not the best option to get fired up (as Charles Leclerc found to his cost), Verstappen consistently extended his lead over the medium-shod Hamilton in a manner that showed just how much of a pace advantage Red Bull has when it is needed.

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There seems little reason to believe then that – barring it making the same set-up error that proved costly in Brazil last year – Red Bull is not going to end the season as the benchmark car in pace terms. But what is more worrying for the opposition is that this week marked an important moment for Red Bull, as it’s wind tunnel penalty has finally run out.

It can now look forward to the forthcoming winter knowing that, after escaping a worse fate this year, it has the luxury of 11% more development time than it had 12 months ago – something that few of its rivals can boast about.

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

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