Written by Carl Hilliard, Edited by Meghana Sree
Three-time World Champion Max Verstappen suffered another poor weekend at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, adding to a string of sub par performances for the Red Bull team. The question at hand now: how, and why are things going south?
With the introduction of the new aerodynamic regulations in 2022, Verstappen and Red Bull ran rampant, with the Dutchman amassing a whopping 15 race wins in total, with Red Bull winning 17 races in all thanks to teammate Sergio Perez. A truly dominant display showed that this was the team to beat in this new era, with the rest of the grid chasing their tails all season long.
More of the same came in 2023, with Red Bull having a grip on both championships from day one. By the season’s end, Verstappen had claimed the chequered flag first a record-breaking 19 times, with Red Bull winning 21 out of 22 races.
The current 2024 season was set to be another faultless sweep for the Milton Keynes outfit, however as fans have come to see, this has been very far from reality.
A strong start to the season saw Verstappen claim seven victories throughout, right up until the Spanish Grand Prix. That was when the dominoes came falling down for Red Bull, as there have been six races since then, and Red Bull has not won a single one.
There has been one key factor at play during this supposed ‘downfall’: McLaren. McLaren are now arguably the best car on the grid, taking a massive step up in terms of their engine power, aero setup, and car balance as well as performance.
This shift in car development gave Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri their first race wins at Miami and Hungary respectively. Norris also went on to win the Dutch Grand Prix, to add salt to the wounds of Verstappen and Red Bull.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc have also both claimed victories this season, along with both Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, meaning that seven different drivers have all won races so far this season.
After the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, both Verstappen and Perez complained about a lack of balance and plenty of oversteer through the slow corners, a sentiment echoed quite frequently over the last couple of race weekends.
This drop off in performance from Red Bull has prompted questions and speculation around the current state of the team, with Team Principal Christian Horner recently shedding some light on the situation.
“Both championships are under pressure,” Horner admitted. “We have to turn the situation around very quickly.”
“This circuit [Monza] has exposed deficiencies we have in the car versus last year. On other tracks, running more downforce hides some of the balance issues we have. As soon as you end up there, you’re harder on the tyres, you try to compensate and move the balance around but in curing one problem, you create another.”
“We don’t have a connection between the front and rear of the car”, Horner continued. “Max can’t lean on the rear into the corner - or Checo [Perez]. You then end up compensating for that and creating understeer and it’s on such a fine line.”
The English team boss also expressed his views on McLaren, and the thought process behind their upgrades and betterment of the MCL38 as a package.
“If you look at McLaren, it’s an evolution of last year, a much simpler car than ours. Perhaps we’ve got a bit too complex.”
“We’ve hit the ceiling in certain areas and it seems that creating more load, we’ve lost the balance and balance seems to be giving better lap times than load,” Horner concluded.
Conclusively, Red Bull’s main reasoning for their poor performance seems to stem from the balance of their car or lack thereof.
Evidently, as results throughout the season have shown so far, Horner and Red Bull have lost their edge. The team has a lot of work to do to get back to the top of the timesheets consistently. Can Red Bull figure out the right balance for the RB20 and eke out the now eight-point gap between themselves and McLaren? Only time can tell.
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