The six key Red Bull F1 wins that highlight its evolution from 2009 to 2023

“The feeling of that first victory was incredible,” recalls Christian Horner. “I thought, ‘If we don’t ever achieve anything else, we’ve won a race on merit – not got lucky, we’ve had to go out and do it the hard way’.” 

From the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix and Sebastian Vettel leading home Mark Webber in the Shanghai rain to Max Verstappen leading every lap in winning the 2023 Canadian GP, Red Bull has reached 100 Formula 1 race victories. It does so in record time, a 14-year spell, but is headed by Mercedes’ 207-race span to Red Bull’s 355.

Those two teams – F1’s pre-eminent, really, for the past 15 years – have very different histories. Mercedes: the grand old manufacturer. Red Bull: the upstart drinks company. That was the latter’s reputation back when it started winning, finally making good on luring Adrian Newey away from McLaren. But now it’s something else entirely.

How Red Bull changed is woven into the story of its 100 wins. 

Win #1 starts the Red Bull cascade  

Back in 2009, Red Bull had rocked up in China having seen Jenson Button romp to two famous wins for Brawn GP – the forerunner to Mercedes’ reincarnation as an F1 dominator once again. Newey had felt the famed double diffuser (a development also fitted to the Williams and Toyota cars) was permitted more due to politics than technical legality. He was therefore disappointed to see the result of a Honda works effort combined with a powerful Mercedes powerplant he claims McLaren (then the de facto Mercedes works squad) had denied Red Bull forge ahead.  

That the RB5 started that season as the second quickest car and ahead of the double diffuser-ed Williams and Toyota machines speaks to the aerodynamic prowess Newey and his team achieved and would go on to sustain. Swift development work catapulted Red Bull ahead by 2009’s end, but China started everything. 

First victory for Red Bull at Shanghai in 2009 was a resounding 1-2 as Vettel headed Webber in the wet

Photo by: James Moy

The RB5’s early rear-tyre-chewing trait fired the Bridgestone wets up nicely and, despite a lower qualifying fuel load handing Brawn a safety car timing advantage around the first pitstops, Vettel and Webber were irrepressible. 

“It was a great equaliser, the wet,” says Horner – Red Bull’s team principal since 2005 and its beginnings taking over from Jaguar, the longest tenure of any current F1 squad boss. “But we’d had a driveshaft issue during qualifying. We were just hoping we weren’t going to lose our first win through a DNF.” 

“A 1-2 was a big deal,” adds Webber. “The party team trying to break the shackles of actually [showing] how serious we were. And I think that was obviously a massive statement for the pitlane and the industry. That Red Bull means business.” 

2010 was a campaign for the ages as Red Bull continued to be fast but fragile. Fast enough for its rivals to cause a stink about its ride height and bodywork flex. Fragile in that its reliability dramas were added to driver and management flux

From there, taking five more wins as 2009 progressed, including Webber’s maiden F1 victory in Germany, Red Bull went about its new trade: sealing F1 world titles. 

Win #7 lights the Vettel title fire 

It might have added three season-starting wins in 2010 to the trio that closed out 2009 but for Vettel’s spark plug and wheel attachment mechanism problems in Bahrain and Australia. The team hit back with a resounding 1-2 in Malaysia. This was a campaign for the ages – Red Bull continued to be fast but fragile. Fast enough for its rivals to cause a stink about its ride height and bodywork flex. Fragile in that its reliability dramas were added to driver and management flux. 

With McLaren and Ferrari fielding title contenders in Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, even the RB6 now taking full advantage of the double diffuser concept and beginning Red Bull’s exhaust-blowing expertise, things went down to the wire. Vettel sensationally triumphed in the Abu Dhabi finale to take Red Bull’s ninth win of the campaign and first world title double. 

The next year was a rampant run for Vettel. In the RB7 he pressed home the advantage he’d accrued in the tweaks made to the blown-exhaust concept by late 2010 – Webber chalking up just one of the team’s 12 wins.  

Win number 15 for Red Bull was another significant one as Vettel clinched the team's first title at the 2010 Abu Dhabi GP

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

In 2012, Alonso thrust a Ferrari that had no title rights into contention, as Vettel and Red Bull rather laboured to a third straight title double and seven more wins. That year, Red Bull’s efforts to successfully implement the RB8’s complex, lowline sidepod exhaust tunnels proved a key development – overcoming the FIA banning the ducts originally conceived on the season’s eve, as well as ending the initial exhaust blowing and nose flexing that had made the RB7 so good. 

Soon to be ended by the start of the V6 hybrid era, Red Bull’s first period of dominance reached its climactic peak with another crushing Vettel campaign in 2013. He ran to 13 wins in the RB5-concept-capping RB9 that generated so much underbody downforce its full potential was only realised once Pirelli reintroduced stronger tyres. On his way to what would be his last Red Bull crown, Vettel famously denied Webber a final Red Bull win in the Malaysian GP ‘Multi-21’ controversy.

Win #50 comes amid Red Bull’s fallow years 

Just as the 2009 aero rules reset helped Red Bull leap to the front, the massive change to V6 turbo hybrids for 2014 pushed it out of position as F1’s top dog, replaced by Mercedes.  

Even during its dominant run at the end of the V8 era, it was estimated its Renault engine was 30bhp – “a pretty decent chunk”, per Webber – down on the class-leading Mercedes powerplants. This deficit grew so much when the V6 turbo hybrids appeared in 2014 it was initially estimated Red Bull was losing a second a lap in straightline speed. 

That year, Webber’s replacement, Daniel Ricciardo, rescued Red Bull’s honour with three opportunistic wins in the RB10 that had a calamitous birth in pre-season testing. That car, which clinched Red Bull’s 50th win in Ricciardo’s Spa triumph, was strong on energy harvesting and braking, but its successor, the RB11, didn’t gain the power Renault aimed to provide.  

The engine was unreliable again, but this time the chassis also had a tricky aero platform for Ricciardo and Vettel replacement Daniil Kvyat to deal with. So, Red Bull slipped back behind the now Vettel-led Ferrari in Mercedes’ long wake – 2015 not adding to Red Bull’s win total, as it went victory-less for the first time in seven years.  

Mercedes’ dominance continued into 2016, but Red Bull returned to winning ways with its new true star. 

Win #51 marks Verstappen’s arrival 

Verstappen won on his very first start for Red Bull at the 2016 Spanish GP after the Mercedes hit self-destruct and collided on lap one

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“That weekend itself was crazy,” Verstappen says looking back on the 2016 Spanish GP and his stunning debut Red Bull win after Hamilton and Nico Rosberg collided, following his surprise elevation from Toro Rosso. “I drove out of the pits, there was so much more rake in the car [a Red Bull speciality since the RB7], I could almost see my own front wing!” 

But, again, this period was one of peppered Red Bull success. Its 2016 challenger – the RB12 – was still down on power compared to Mercedes and Ricciardo added another win only after Hamilton’s fiery exit in Malaysia.  

The 2017 aero rules reset ushered in F1’s ultra-high-downforce era, which helped Red Bull close in on Mercedes and it took three further wins. But it couldn’t make a 2009-like jump and remained behind overall, with Ferrari again in between as the team grappled with early wind tunnel correlation problems. By this stage, Red Bull was forced into running its Renault engines rebadged – the ongoing power deficit issues causing such friction that it sought Mercedes and Ferrari alternatives for 2016 only to be rebuffed and have to save what it could from its existing deal. 

The RB15 of 2019 was about laying foundations of the Honda partnership, which meant engine-change grid penalties were better accepted because they came with performance gains

A possible 2018 title challenge evaporated as fresh Renault power deficiencies and unreliability pushed Red Bull towards Honda for 2019. Ricciardo soon concluded he’d rather race elsewhere than alongside Verstappen for that year. He did brilliantly win in Monaco before leaving, despite an MGU-K failure that was costing him around 160bhp – making up for the Red Bull pitstop nightmare that had lost a likely victory there ahead of Hamilton in 2016. Such street-track excellence showed how Red Bull’s continued aero efforts could make up for its power deficit, reinforced by Verstappen chalking up 2017 and 2018 Mexico City success in that thin air. 

The RB15 of 2019 was about laying the foundations of the Honda partnership, which meant engine-change grid penalties were better accepted because they came with performance gains. That was a season in which Red Bull struggled to replace Ricciardo with a driver close enough to Verstappen’s level, which meant he only took three wins that year and not four. Pierre Gasly’s absence from the lead fight in Hungary enabled Hamilton to pull off an audacious two-stop win there and it led Red Bull to conclude it was better off replacing the Frenchman with Alex Albon for the next race. 

Albon also, however, couldn’t match Verstappen in 2020 – the pandemic-hit year that Red Bull did much to rescue by providing its Austrian track to help prove F1’s COVID protocols worked. This was important in convincing other countries to host the nomadic championship.  

By then Verstappen was coming into his own – the only driver regularly able to keep Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas in sight as Mercedes’ W11 masterpiece restored its pace advantage to levels not clocked since 2016. Verstappen also added two more Red Bull wins, including stunning Mercedes in the 70th Anniversary GP, then comprehensively defeating it in the Abu Dhabi finale. 

Verstappen inflicted a rare defeat on Mercedes in 2020 at the 70th Anniversary GP, Red Bull's 63rd win, before it truly got on terms in 2021

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Then came 2021. There, the RB16B finally caught Mercedes, which was badly hampered by the changes to the new smaller floor rules. Verstappen scored 10 victories in that infamous campaign versus Hamilton, including one that really shouldn’t stand with the rest in the history books, the Spa washout, while his latest team-mate Sergio Perez twice inherited another in Baku. But Verstappen’s final triumph that year made the biggest splash…

Win #75 starts F1’s second Red Bull era 

The 2021 Abu Dhabi saga ended with Red Bull’s 75th F1 win, and with it came its second world champion, as Verstappen was controversially crowned for the first time. That fuelled a winter of intrigue as the championship prepared for its most recent rules reset – the return of ground effect cars – and a Hamilton/Mercedes fightback. 

In the end, Ferrari came out as Red Bull’s closest challenger – actually leading the way before the RB18 lost weight and gained pace – as Mercedes’ potential was lost in the porpoising W13. Although Pierre Wache had by this point been Red Bull’s technical director since 2018, part of what Horner says is how “an organisation has always got to evolve”, Newey’s influence was felt in the team avoiding being seduced by the theoretical downforce peaks of other ground effect design options. This was thanks to his knowledge accrued as a student and early in his famous motorsport career. The RB18 had a stable platform others could only chase, as Verstappen and Perez swept to 17 2022 wins and the former’s second crown. 

Win #100 puts Red Bull in rare F1 territory 

As it stands, Verstappen is well on his way to title number three. The RB19 is 2023’s clear class leader thanks to its even more stable package, now class-leading Honda engine output and a tidy aero efficiency balance.  

Last weekend’s win also put Verstappen level with Ayrton Senna on 41 in F1’s driver records. This was two races on from him matching Vettel as the Red Bull family’s most successful driver with 39 victories. Aston Martin squandering a shot at victory in Monaco means a 2023 season sweep remains on. However remote it might seem, that would be a unique championship feat – moving Red Bull away from its fellow centurions Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Williams. 

“It’s a hugely illustrious company that we’re in and I think the pace that we’ve done it is something that we’re extremely proud of,” concludes Horner, soon to be helming a team building its own engine in partnership with Ford for 2026.  “But it’s just numbers and for us, it’s all about the next race, not about the last one.”

Horner and Red Bull's senior leadership are anxious to avoid resting on their laurels with the prospect of an F1 first - a clean sweep of wins in a season - still on the cards

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool