The F1 cycles of staying ahead of the opposition

Will Red Bull be able to keep up its momentum and stay ahead in 2023 and beyond? That’s the burning question that only it will have an answer to. Reliability apart, it’s punishing these days to be that one step ahead of the opposition. Invariably, when it does achieve a level of excellence, this becomes the expected level that must be maintained - and everybody is rooting for you to trip up.

With the cost cap breach punishments handed out last year limiting both its budget and wind tunnel time, the reigning F1 world champions will be challenged to keep up its current levels. But it is at least defending a handsome advantage.

So far, following the Canadian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen has won six of the eight races against Sergio Perez’s two. An unprecedented clean sweep of wins is still very much on the cards.

In the same period in 1988, when McLaren won 15 out of the 16 races, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna had so far won four apiece. Senna went on to win the championship, but with equal machinery (although many doubted that) it was always touch and go between the two. Having shown encouraging signs at the start of the season, Perez has strangely faded and has left his team-mate vulnerable to attack from Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

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Going back 35 years, when McLaren was so dominant, thanks to the MP4/4 and its two great drivers, things were very different. Based in Unit 22 in the backwaters of Woking, there was no on-site wind tunnel which meant going to Farnborough or Southampton. This required booking a slot and taking all necessary equipment, such as struts and wheel tethers and of course the 40% or 50% model.

Nor were there rapid prototype machines to make small parts quickly, which meant a long lead wait as patterns were made before the moulds and components could be released. And it all had to be done by hand, as there was no CAD or CAM.

Most of the development went towards the engine, at that time supplied by Honda, even though it was the last year that turbocharged engines were allowed. However, improvements were made to bodywork and turbo ducting during the year, which kept the car competitive.

McLaren holds the record for highest win percentage in a season when it took 15 out of 16 in 1988

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

There was no cost cap to worry about apart from Marlboro, who held most of the purse strings. But the biggest difference from today - aside from the then-normal 16 races of that era - was that we probably doubled our mileage tally with testing in Europe and Japan. A permanent test team and car were based in Japan, where Honda was able to not only keep developing the V6 turbo, but also start testing the V10 for the next season and then the V12 in preparation for 1991.

I worked closely with McLaren tester Emanuele Pirro, who was a great asset before he was recruited by Benetton. You needed someone who was reliable, good feedback, someone you could depend on not to do silly things, and Emanuele was all of those things.

Fast forward to 1994, Benetton had just won the world championship in perhaps fortunate circumstances after Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill clashed in the Adelaide finale. Benetton had been using Ford engines that year, but for its title defence in 1995 swapped to Renault, who also supplied our main rivals Williams.

During early testing it became obvious that there was a problem as the alternator belt kept dislodging itself. The alternator at that time was situated at the back of the engine between the two cylinder heads, so at least it was easily reached. It took several sessions on the dyno, where this area was videoed, to see that the belt was turning itself inside out and then sliding off the pulleys due to the engine vibrations. In the end, we had to fit seven idler pulleys to keep the belt under control, but even with this fix there were other failures during the season.

After Schumacher left for Ferrari, Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger didn't manage to win a race in 1996 as Benetton slipped to third in the constructors' standings, two points behind Ferrari

In order to keep ahead of the opposition, the major developments came from the R&D department using its early version of a seven post rig. Here, Rory Byrne, who was a great fan of using Belville washers instead of bump rubbers, experimented with different combinations to obtain the best ride quality. We used this method to good effect at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, where the team scored a 1-2 for Schumacher and Johnny Herbert, aided by hydraulic problems stopping Hill on the last lap.

I was Herbert's race engineer that year, and he twice benefitted from contact between Schumacher and Hill to win at Silverstone and Monza. Schumacher ultimately secured his second title with nine wins, as Benetton also won the prestigious constructors' championship it had missed out on in 1994. But after Schumacher left for Ferrari, Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger didn't manage to win a race in 1996 as Benetton slipped to third in the constructors' standings, two points behind Ferrari. Williams won back-to-back titles before its own fall from grace after it lost works engines from Renault.

While I was setting up the test team at Benetton, McLaren had its seasons in the sun again with Mika Hakkinen winning the world drivers’ championship in 1998 and 1999. Lewis Hamilton scored its most recent title in 2008, but the team only once managed to win the constructors’ championship in that period. Adrian Newey had been key to its successes before the millennium, but things were never the same after his 2001 flirtation with Jaguar, after which McLaren introduced its unpopular matrix system of management that led to his eventual exit.

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The peak of Ferrari's powers came in 2002 with Schumacher, Barrichello, Todt, Brawn and Byrne

Photo by: LAT Photographic

McLaren's inconsistency meant it was unable to halt Ferrari's domination from 2000 to 2004. Following its near-misses with Schumacher in 1997 and 1998, before his leg-breaking crash at Silverstone in 1999, everything came good as the arrival of Jean Todt as team principal and Brawn as technical director. Together with Byrne, they knocked the Scuderia into shape, ending its 21-year drought by claiming five successive championship doubles. During this period, Schumacher won an astonishing 48 races to the nine of Barrichello. In both 2002 and 2004 Ferrari won 15 races, almost equalling the record set by McLaren.

Benetton was renamed Renault for 2002, and became a winner again in 2003 with Fernando Alonso. His first win at the Hungaroring was followed the next year by Jarno Trulli breaking his duck in Monaco, also a high downforce circuit. By 2005, when tyres were required to last an entire race distance, Renault was in a position of challenging for regular victories. As Ferrari's Bridgestones struggled, Alonso won his first title, aided by Giancarlo Fisichella and specifically his Michelin tyres.

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Alonso defeated a resurgent Schumacher in 2006, but the switch to Bridgestone in 2007 after Michelin's withdrawal resulted in a fall from grace for Renault. The shape of the front tyres caused a huge amount of turbulent air around the front wing, creating an instability overall on the aerodynamics on the rest of the car. With Alonso's defection to McLaren, the team's only podium that year fell to his replacement Heikki Kovalainen, who was second in Japan.

But of course, Red Bull is no stranger to success. In 2009, the former Jaguar squad finished second in the world championship with the Newey-designed RB5 car driven by Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel. Then followed a run where Vettel became world champion for four consecutive years and since then, it has only once finished outside the top three in the constructors’.

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Between Red Bull's periods of dominance, Mercedes was the pre-eminent force when the turbo hybrid era started in 2014. Aside from 2016, when he was beaten by his team mate Nico Rosberg, Hamilton won each year up to 2020. In 2021 he looked to be on course for an eighth success until the controversial Abu Dhabi safety car restart allowed Verstappen and Red Bull to snatch it away.

Red Bull has been on the ascendency since the switch to ground effect aerodynamics, with last year's RB18 seeing off an early challenge from Ferrari. Now the dominant RB19, with Newey still a key figure in its conception using his knowledge from the 1980s to harness the underfloor aero, has the opposition striving to adopt its best features. Its Honda power unit is also right at the forefront.

The Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari teams have Red Bull firmly in their sights, but all signs point to the Milton Keynes team finding a way to continue its success in 2023 even as its focus increases on building up a new partnership with Ford for the onset of new rules in 2026. Still, Verstappen could do with his team-mate coming to the party more often.

How long can Red Bull maintain its latest F1 domination?

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images