by How do you stop a charging bull? In Withnail & I, Marwood, the character played by Paul McGann, happens upon an escapee from the park up in the Lake District and is advised to “catch his ring” and “outvie him”. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with the type of bull designed by Adrian Newey, who has just spent a season running rampant around race circuits around the world.
Formula One has known nothing like Red Bull’s dominance this year: 21 wins in 22 races, 30 podiums, 11 fastest laps, five sprints. And this is a car they stopped developing during the summer so they could focus on next year.
The team based in Milton Keynes couldn’t stop him. The 860 points they took was more than double second place Mercedes’ haul of 409.
And why would they stop here? Red Bull has the best car, the best design team (shockingly, Newey only devotes “half his time” to F1 these days, with Frenchman Pierre Waché now the current point guard), the greatest team principal experience, and the best driver.
Max Verstappen took 19 of his 21 wins this year, the most by any driver in a single season. He also led more than 1,000 laps, the first time in history that anyone had done that. At just 26 years old, the Dutch driver has won 54 races. Only Michael Schumacher (91) and Lewis Hamilton (103) are ahead of him on the all-time list.
How quickly Verstappen catches will depend on how quickly anyone can catch a Red Bull. At the moment that looks very likely. There are no major changes to the technical regulations next year, which means the cars will only be an evolution of this year. And as mentioned, Red Bull started focusing on next year’s car back in July. “The biggest changes we’ve had since then are nose changes,” said Christian Horner at one press conference in Abu Dhabi.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re impossible to catch. Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin will be hoping to make gains over the winter. And they can all give reasons why they might.
Mercedes is completely revamping their car concept, so who knows what they could do. It is a risk, as Toto Wolff admitted in Abu Dhabi. But they must take it if they have any chance of beating Red Bull before 2026.
Ferrari under Frédéric Vasseur looked tougher, finishing the season strongly.
McLaren were the best team in 2023. The Woking team has a new wind tunnel and simulator coming next season, not to mention a new technical director in Rob Marshall who comes, helpfully, from Red Bull.
Aston Martin also has a new state-of-the-art factory, as well as a new wind tunnel.
All four will also have extra tunnel time compared to Red Bull due to finishing lower than them in the constructors’ championship.
The trouble is that all those teams made gains this season by copying Red Bull. And when you’re copying a team, you’re necessarily behind them in the development curve. If any of them want to beat Red Bull in the short to medium term, before the next set of regulations in 2026, they will have to start taking risks and try to do things before Red Bull. Not easy.
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown admitted as much during a media brunch in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, noting that he could feel his team getting stronger, bolder under new team principal Andrea Stella. “There’s a real ‘let’s do this’ attitude,” he said. “You can see the energy in the team. Talking about ‘taking more risks’ and ‘being not just this good but better’.”
There are, of course, also levers that can be pulled from car design. Political levers. After the F1 Commission Meeting in Abu Dhabi on Saturday there was much talk that one team, possibly based in Milton Keynes, had found ‘financial loopholes’ in the budget cap this year. That could be closed this winter.
The other big talking point after the F1 Commission meeting revolved around Red Bull’s relationship with Alpha Tauri, with some teams suspicious that they could be sharing more than the regulations allow, and that Alpha Tauri could be a test bed for certain Red Bull upgrades. Horner flatly denied this after the Abu Dhabi race, insisting that they were scrupulous about only sharing what was allowed. But there will certainly be pressure on the FIA to police this area effectively in the future.
In the long term, many teams would like the commercial rights holder to change the Concorde Agreement to prevent a single entity from owning two teams.
But that’s 2026 again. By next year? It’s hard to see anyone stopping Red Bull. They had an aero test ban this year and look what they achieved. The first they ever had in the drivers’ standings, and that was with another driver who could find himself replaced by a stronger one if he doesn’t start the next season satisfactorily. Perhaps the best solution, as Marwood ultimately decides in Withnail & I, is to throw your hands up in the air and scream.
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