Problem child or mercurial genius? Red Bull's RB21 is flighty, but can be faster than the McLaren

As Formula 1 fans, we're predisposed to looking at things in order - race results, timesheets, fastest lap charts - and start arguments about our own subjective rankings of motorsport-themed esoterica. A top 10 ranking of the best driver of all time is sure to ignite torches and sharpen pitchforks, for instance, let alone the descent into a Hunger Games-esque battleground every time the subject of "best Minardi livery" comes up. I'd pick 1996, but then I'd have to go into hiding.

But we need to reassess our relationship with rankings and immovable stats, because Red Bull is confounding them a little bit this year in its own attempt to sell an underdog story. After qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix, Max Verstappen made the suggestion that Red Bull was now the fourth-fastest team in F1 - behind McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari. That was not only a reductive way of looking at it, but it was also not really true; Ferrari had been a step behind the top three in the opening races, and Lewis Hamilton's sprint win had not been followed up on in qualifying in any case. His Saturday-race heroics had, and have, been the exception to the rule.

After three years of having a big target painted on its back, Red Bull is attempting to relish in an underdog status. That McLaren is generally considered to have the 'fastest' car is, in most circumstances (but not all, we'll get to that later), true, and Red Bull is more than happy to keep that narrative perpetuating to bring some of the attention away from itself. After all, it was considered a disappointment that it fell to third in the constructors' championship last year; by reducing expectations, Red Bull can dictate the response.

So what I'm about to say next might seem like a bold statement: in two races in 2025, Red Bull has had the fastest car. That statement might not tally with the overwhelming current narrative that McLaren's MCL39 holds that accolade, but it's important to make a distinction. McLaren likely has the best all-rounder, although we'll see if that comes to pass around some of the slower circuits on the grid, and has the shallower 'wave' versus Red Bull's greater peaks and troughs.

Cars are dynamic objects. For many years, smaller teams designed their cars to be good around two or three circuits to maximise their points-getting potential at the more specialised venues, and then accepted whatever fortune came their way at others. Even today's cars, the ultimate exercises in compromise, favour some venues compared to others. We've spoken endlessly about weaknesses in the high-speed or the low-speed among the midfielders, but Red Bull's high-wire-act RB21 is something of a rare extreme case at the front of the field.

The qualifying results from Japan or Saudi Arabia are exceptionally slim between Verstappen and the McLarens - about one hundredth in either case. But, in both events, Verstappen was able to reach a seemingly transcendent level in his car to sweep to a surprise pole, both examples making people sit up and take notice. The Saudi pole had a slightly greater feeling of inevitability about it, as Lando Norris had taken himself out of the running by smearing his McLaren against a wall, but Verstappen still did an apparently impossible lap to beat Oscar Piastri.

Verstappen's Saudi Arabian GP pole was his latest example of extracting everything from the car

Photo by: Lars Baron - Motorsport Images

But it's not impossible; the Red Bull is demonstrably capable of such moments of magic. And it only furthers Verstappen's legend as a driver that he's able to reach that level in the car, wading through the mire of wayward handling and inconsistent upshift response to lay it all on the table. One of Williams chief James Vowles' pet peeves is to suggest that a driver can outperform a car, and he's not wrong; the Red Bull can hit the high notes, but it requires a lot of work to get there.

Obviously, the RB21 was not particularly capable of doing so in Bahrain since the circuit plays to very few of its strengths; long straights punctuated by acute-angled corners reward hard braking and unbreakable traction, which the Red Bull doesn't really chime with at all. One of the weaknesses of Red Bull's recent lineage of cars has lain in corner exits from short-radius, slow-speed turns, and that's been particularly exposed in this year's car. McLaren, so long as the drivers take a standoffish stance at the corner entry and focus on pinning the throttle at the earliest available opportunity, can enjoy a much better time of it.

Where Red Bull's cars have excelled is in the build and retention of downforce through the high-speed bits. If we look at the GPS data Verstappen and Piastri's qualifying laps from Jeddah overlaid, there is a clear trend emerging through the Turn 4-13 and Turn 16-22 high-speed zones. Stronger traction from Piastri's McLaren out of slower corners confers a growing advantage through the early part of the two sections but, as the speed builds, Verstappen stalls the change in lap delta and then begins to reclaim it once again. The longer the cars are under high-load cornering, the better the Red Bull begins to shape up.

The assertions about Red Bull's car are not quite correct - it can, with the right tickling in the right places, be the 'fastest' car on a hot lap, but it's not there yet over a race distance

This changes how you approach the two cars. With the McLaren, the drivers can take it corner by corner - brake, turn, set up for the next one - but the Red Bull needs a bit more of a holistic approach to a lap. The time is in there if you hook the rhythm up, but there needs to be a tacit acceptance that the approach to Turn 1 will ultimately affect Turn 27. Verstappen has the innate ability to do that on feel.

It's like this: with a couple of races' worth of experience, Verstappen could probably do what the McLaren drivers are doing with the MCL39. It might be an alien way of driving, as it is for Norris, but he'd adapt to the patient corner entry to swing the car in, and then kick the loud pedal for a speedy getaway. Could either Piastri or Norris do what Verstappen does in the RB21? I think the timescales on doing so would probably be much larger...

Either way, the assertions about Red Bull's car are not quite correct - it can, with the right tickling in the right places, be the 'fastest' car on a hot lap. It's not there yet over a race distance, as its performance versus McLaren does correlate directly with degradation levels, but it's far ahead being the 'fourth-fastest' car on the F1 grid... in most circumstances, at least.

The RB21 has proven the class of the field in conditions and circuit types it is suited to

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

If you look at the form book over the opening five races, Red Bull was up and down in relative pace terms when considering supertimes: second-fastest in Australia, third in China, first in Japan, fourth in Bahrain, first in Saudi Arabia. We've explained the type of circuits where it's possible to get more out of the RB21, but that rather illustrates where it lays perfectly: anything fast and wiggly.

(Also, on an unrelated side-note: remember how, at the start of the season, there were those convinced that Red Bull should just take the Racing Bulls VCARB 02 and repaint it? That's starting to look a bit silly now, isn't it?)

It's nice to have that ebb and flow to a year. Even if 2025 ends up being a two-team title battle, it can still be exciting; 2000, 2007, and 2008 were fiercely contested years as Ferrari and McLaren had very different strengths and traded places at the top on a bi-weekly basis.

We should expect this to continue over 2025; McLaren's 'wave' should remain relatively shallow and it'll sit at the top end of the times more often than not. It's a car for all weathers and, even at its weaker races, it should be in the hallowed halls known worldwide as 'there or thereabouts'. Red Bull, at circuits with a greater proliferation of high-speed corner profiles, will be strong. But the calendar is starting to wind towards venues where the cornering dynamic changes; Miami might be decent for Red Bull, but Imola and Barcelona might be a little bit more favourable to the McLarens at present. Monaco? Red Bull might not be looking forward to that one.

Then again, it depends what shape the two teams are in with updates once the European season kicks off. And then there's Mercedes, which is not very far behind either...

Which team will come out on top by the end of 2025?

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images