Red Bull: A team in turmoil but also fighting for F1 titles - what's going on?

In a certain corner of Milton Keynes, there was serenity. After a prosperous flurry of titles and triumphs at the start of the 2010s, Red Bull had finally delivered upon the aspirations under which it had entered Formula 1.

A more turbulent period succeeded that, defined by disagreements with powertrain supplier Renault, the switch to Honda, and then the rebound into F1’s stratosphere. It began the championship’s new era in 2022 in the fashion in which it had concluded the old one – upgrading one title into two before forging a course of supremacy over 2023.

A year ago, forecasts that suggested 2024 would effectively serve as a repeat of 2023 looked to be correct. Melbourne aside, Red Bull had burst into the month of May on course to continue its dominant streak – one that led to 21 of 22 wins across the previous season. But there was something in the water, something that threatened to cast Red Bull’s apparent cruise into far choppier waters – and when Lando Norris captured last year’s win in Miami, the boat had started to rock.

Max Verstappen continued to win races in 2024, perhaps in spite of the car he was driving, as McLaren and Mercedes threw away chances to stall out the Red Bull driver’s assault on the championship. But when Verstappen and Norris sustained their infamous clash at Austria’s uphill Turn 3, there was an apparent transfer in power; some kind of Freaky Friday situation where the title lifeforce had been conducted into McLaren’s hands. The Woking squad had been 87 points behind Red Bull at the end of the Austria weekend; it finished 77 points ahead by the end of the year.

Contrary to popular belief, Red Bull didn’t suddenly stop being competitive in 2024. You might argue that, instead, the rapids set to pull it away from a constructors’ championship repeat began to intensify – Red Bull and Verstappen had been able to fight against it but, by the summer break, its one-finger grasp of a conveniently placed rock was broken and the team had been whisked from centre stage. 

Suffice to say that last year’s RB20 was no longer the quickest car in the second half of last year. You could make the case that it was probably third-quickest, having been surpassed by both McLaren and Ferrari after the summer break, and it was only the sheer force of Verstappen’s will that ensured the team was still in the mix for poles, podiums and wins. Equally, it was through Sergio Perez’s complete loss of confidence in his car that Red Bull slipped out of contention quite so rapidly.

That prelude brings us to today, and the picture has changed very little. After finding its RB20 had a narrow set-up window, the team’s attempt to build a car that had a little more room to manoeuvre simply hasn’t borne much in the way of fruit, even to the point where the only man who can wring performance out of it – Verstappen – struggles to deal with its more outrageous whims. After losing the constructors’ title last year, Red Bull may very well lose the drivers’ crown too.

Red Bull cruised to the 2022 and 2023 constructors' crowns, but McLaren ended its dominant streak in 2024 and the Woking squad remains on top this year

From demonstrating nothing short of supremacy in 2023, the Red Bull steamroller has been neutered inside 18 months. It’s still winning races and has a car capable of performing wonders on its day, but only situationally. How did it come to this, and how did Red Bull cede pace to McLaren and its heady ascent through the order?

Red Bull’s RB21: fast, but capricious

For many years, parallels have been drawn between Red Bull’s lineage of cars and that of the Honda MotoGP team’s bikes: machines that only a world-class driver/rider can operate, with a venomous bite reserved for those underprepared to deal with their whims. It served Honda well for a few years as Marc Marquez reeled off four successive titles across 2016-19, but there was a point of no return even for someone of his calibre. 

In his case, his arm break at the 2020 Jerez opener served to underline how difficult the Honda RC213V had become to control at full pelt; after a lengthy lay-off due to complications with the injury (not exactly helped by the Spaniard’s eagerness to return), he found the Honda difficult to contend with. The performance was arguably there, but only by operating on a tightrope. By contrast, Ducati had put together a string of Desmosedici GP bikes that could operate in that performance place without the need to take wild risks, hence the Italian marque’s dominant run over the past few years.

The problem has been that Red Bull’s apparent shift in philosophy hasn’t really paid off so far. The RB21 is still very difficult to get into the right ballpark; although the car is largely at its best when it’s ‘on the nose’, many of Verstappen’s complaints are that set-up tweaks struggle to deliver this

Red Bull seems to be approaching the same problem, producing a car that can be teased into race wins but only after significant hustling from its drivers. Verstappen has the acuity to do this; Sergio Perez, by contrast, could not as updates made the car far less user-friendly. Neither could Liam Lawson, who found the car so alien to the Racing Bulls package he was used to that he failed to break out of Q1 in either of his outings for the team. Yuki Tsunoda has enjoyed a better time of it, and seems to be able to match Verstappen when the two are operating at 95% – but squeezing out that final 5% reserved for a make-or-break Q3 hot lap is still missing from the Japanese’s grasp.

Following Perez’s issues and the flatlining performance curve that Red Bull faced in 2024, the team attempted to widen its car’s ‘operating window’ at the expense of peak performance; the argument being that, if the car is too difficult to set up, then it’s never going to realistically reach its zenith. Over last season, it became patently clear that a good baseline set-up was elusive at best. At Imola, for example, it took Verstappen until Q3 to finally bring his RB20 into a window he felt comfortable with. Even then, it was only a smidgen better than the McLaren in the race but, thankfully for Verstappen, it’s notoriously hard to pass at the Italian venue.

Max Verstappen has romped to four world titles, while his team-mates have repeatedly faltered

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The design direction was further influenced by the team’s mid-season woes – a Hungarian GP upgrade package in July did not chime with the RB20 and the subsequent developments led to a miserable weekend at Monza, where the car was distinctly fourth best. Verstappen subsequently remarked at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that the updates in the pipeline after Monza had to be “put in the bin”.

However, the problem has been that Red Bull’s apparent shift in philosophy hasn’t really paid off so far. The RB21 is still very difficult to get into the right ballpark; although the car is largely at its best when it’s ‘on the nose’, many of Verstappen’s complaints are that set-up tweaks struggle to deliver this. Even at the Saudi Arabian GP, a venue more favourable to the 2025 car’s sensibilities, the Dutchman struggled with understeer throughout the weekend. It took all three practice sessions to tap into the right vein of performance.

After Bahrain in April, there were rumours that Red Bull’s grandes fromages were in ‘crisis talks’ – indeed, team principal Christian Horner had been spotted in conversation with adviser Helmut Marko, technical chief Pierre Wache and chief engineer Paul Monaghan following its weakest race of the year. Nevertheless, Horner took issue with the suggestion of a crisis. 

“If you sit down with your engineers and discuss the race, I wouldn’t describe that as a crisis summit,” he mused on Sky. “You sit down and you discuss these things logically. There’s always engineering solutions to engineering issues. There’s not a crisis. We’re not where we want to be, we’ve got some issues with the car that we’re working through and the whole team’s working incredibly hard. I think we understand what the issues are, and we’re introducing a series of upgrades over the coming races to try and address some of those shortcomings.”

It’s clear that the RB21 operates best at circuits where high levels of downforce are necessary. Like its forebears, the car’s floor is highly effective at retaining downforce through high-speed, long-radius corners, and remains stronger than McLaren in this area. Looking at speed traces at both Suzuka and Jeddah, the McLaren can carry a smidgen more speed into the corners but, as the downforce bleeds off towards the exit, the Red Bull can reverse the arrears.

At the other end, the Red Bull can carry decent mid-corner speed through the short-radius corners, but struggles with traction on the exit. The McLaren requires a different style to drive it effectively, asking its drivers to be patient at the entry of the corners with the promise of greater (and regular) rewards on the corner exit.

Red Bull is still arguably stronger than McLaren in some areas, such as one-lap pace

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

And that’s just on a single lap. Over a race distance, Red Bull’s pace is defined by inferior tyre degradation versus McLaren, and that becomes more apparent in the progression through a stint. Even at Suzuka, where Red Bull enjoyed its best run of the season so far, it was evident that Norris’s lighter touch on the medium tyres in the opening stint had bought him a bit more pace in the laps preceding their pitstops. Unfortunately for McLaren, it wasn’t by quite enough to prise open a passing opportunity.

It’s not easy to fix that tempestuousness in a car without losing the outright pace potential. Aerodynamically, the engineers can focus their attentions on perfecting the components to deliver more consistent downforce, but Red Bull’s contention is that its wind tunnel correlation is significantly off the mark. This means that the data Red Bull sees in its Bedford tunnel, which Horner has described as a “Cold War relic”, does not necessarily tally with that measured at the track. If it’s a consistent discrepancy, the team can work with it – but that it points to this as a contributing factor suggests that the factor of difference tends to fluctuate. 

“I think particularly when you get to the finer elements of a set of regulations like this, the wind tunnel that we have has its limitations, which is why we’ve invested in a new tunnel which is in the process of being constructed [with 2027 slated as its completion date],” Horner explained.

Rather than Newey’s departure, the growing consensus is that Rob Marshall’s move to McLaren is the much bigger loss. Since joining the Woking squad, Marshall has helped a rejuvenated team continue its growth and attain a much higher level

“But with a set of regulations like this, you have a scatter of three points [of downforce] a run pretty much, and when you’re looking for a point, a point and a half, that’s in the scatter of the readings that you get from the tunnel. It doesn’t help, but we’ve got some very bright engineers and aerodynamicists and mechanical designers that I’m sure will figure it out.” 

Newey is a loss, but is Marshall a more significant one? 

Had Red Bull not endured the power struggles that plagued it through the opening acts of 2024, it may well have been able to keep hold of talisman Adrian Newey. The design guru is generally considered to have played a significant part in Red Bull’s upward mobility at the start of the 2022-spec ruleset, and his decision to leave the team coincided with its slow decline in performance versus the other teams. Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation here, but having Newey on board as something of a diagnostician is undeniably missed at Red Bull. 

Let’s not forget the impact of that power play. When Horner was accused of inappropriate conduct by a female employee at Red Bull, with a series of WhatsApp messages purported to be records of communication between the two parties, it rather set the stage for internal – and arguably internecine – conflict between the Thai and Austrian shareholders in Red Bull. Horner had the support of the Thai side, which owns 51% of Red Bull GmbH, while adviser Marko had the support of those in Austria; following the death of Dietrich Mateschitz, this faction became fronted by his son Mark and CEO of Corporate Projects Oliver Mintzlaff.

Red Bull has lost valuable members of staff in recent months, such as Newey, Marshall and even Wheatley - but, who is the bigger loss?

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

This led to a combustible few months at Red Bull HQ, although the matter was settled with good results on-track and Horner cleared of all accusations by an internal investigation. But it helped turn Newey away, and led to his lengthy period of soul-searching before signing up to join Aston Martin. 

In some circles it was postulated that, without Newey, Red Bull would struggle to attain the level of performance to which it had become accustomed. To others, it was said that the Briton’s involvement was less than that assumed, and that Wache’s technical leadership had been more instrumental in Red Bull’s modern-day title triumphs. As ever, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

Rather than Newey’s departure, the growing consensus is that Rob Marshall’s move to McLaren is the much bigger loss. Since joining the Woking squad, Marshall has helped a rejuvenated team continue its growth and attain a much higher level, with McLaren able to tap into his working knowledge of how to get the best out of the current regulatory cycle. Amid team principal Andrea Stella’s managerial changes at the team, which has also helped extract the best out of former Red Bull aerodynamicist Peter Prodromou by putting him back into an aero-facing role, Marshall has served as the final piece of the jigsaw.

Where Marshall has succeeded is in working as the link between the three different ‘pillars’ in McLaren’s technical operations: aerodynamics, chassis design and vehicle performance. In the past, these appeared to be made up of fragmented factions under the aegis of one technical director, before Stella’s reforms ensured that all three sections were fully unified and able to operate cohesively. Marshall, who sits at the top of the tree, can set a tempo defined by his years of fighting for titles to ensure all three choirs sing to the same tune without taking on too many responsibilities himself.

It might be a coincidence that Red Bull appeared to be on the slide when Newey wound down his involvement, but it’s certainly no accident that Marshall’s arrival at McLaren timed perfectly with its own ascent beyond Red Bull in the pecking order. Losing Jonathan Wheatley to Sauber will also be a huge loss; while the excellent Gianpiero Lambiase now takes on many of Wheatley’s trackside responsibilities, its former sporting director’s keen eye for regulatory inconsistencies and drill sergeant-like approach to extracting efficient pitstops from his crew gives the team a little less ammunition trackside. That’s not to say Lambiase can’t continue that work, but he’s got enough on his hands keeping Verstappen’s less-tactful radio traffic in check.

Does Red Bull risk alienating its biggest asset?

If Red Bull didn’t have Verstappen, it would be in dire straits. As discussed, the RB21 is very difficult to coax into its upper-most plane of performance, but Verstappen has the latent talent available to hit those heights. Yet, the car’s baseline performance has represented something of a comedown from his four titles on the trot, to the point where he’s already told media he’s “just participating” in this year’s championship.

The biggest loss for Red Bull though would be Verstappen, whose future has been a constant talking point

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

This has led to various suggestions that Verstappen may be casting his net out for a potential landing pad should he dive into a Red Bull escape pod in the near future. This was suggested by Marko, who admitted to fears that Verstappen might be able to trigger an exit clause in his contract should results not be forthcoming over 2025. Aston Martin has been the popular alternative, underlined by the potential for a big-money offer and the chance to reunite with Newey and Honda. 

But the four-time champion has refuted this line of questioning, stating that his sole focus is on helping Red Bull extricate itself from a slightly thorny situation with its temperamental car.

“Honestly, a lot of people are talking about it, except me,” Verstappen stated. “I just want to focus on my car, work with the people in the team, that’s the only thing I’m thinking about in Formula 1. I’m very relaxed. I am happy [at Red Bull], I’m just not very happy with of course our car. But that goes for everyone, we all want to be better, there’s no secret about that. That’s what we’re trying to improve.”

Even if Verstappen was to consider moving towards the exit, where would he go? The likeliest course of action is to suck it and see with Red Bull’s answer to the new regulations, at the risk of his own patience being sternly tested

Horner also assuaged any fears within Red Bull that Verstappen might be set to walk out of the door, noting that the “noise” has only really come externally – aside from Marko’s aforementioned statement about his own concerns. “Max is, you know, working very hard with the team,” Horner contended.

“He stated once again that you know his focus is here. He’s working incredibly hard on this, collectively with the rest of the team. And we’re a team, we win together, we lose together; that’s the way that we operate. Our focus is on sorting the car out, and everything is still in play.”

And Horner’s right, to a degree. Red Bull’s performance in Saudi Arabia did suggest that the RB21 is steadily starting to come to the team, and with each passing race it’s beginning to understand what it takes to attain the upper reaches of its performance window. If it can turn the tide and find some peace with its developments, then it would be impossible to cross Verstappen’s name off the list of title contenders, especially if McLaren cannot make the most of its early advantage.

But there’s also the longer term to consider. Verstappen will be aware of how the team is progressing with its 2026 project, particularly as Red Bull is producing its own powertrains – in conjunction with Ford – for the first time, and any concerns about either would not be particularly conducive in maintaining his future at the team. 

Yet even if Verstappen was to consider moving towards the exit, where would he go? The Mercedes door appears to be closing, and Aston Martin has Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll under contract. The likeliest course of action is to suck it and see with Red Bull’s answer to the new regulations, at the risk of his own patience being sternly tested.

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Should Verstappen just stick it out at Red Bull given his options are slim?

Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images