Red Bull has made a series of changes to its new F1 car in a bid to avoid the issues it ran into last year.
Having a peaky car with a theoretically high potential seems to be the wrong approach in these regulations, as we learned from the Merc zero-pod debacle. I’d also be wary of writing off Red Bull just yet - their preseason testing was fraught with issues and there aren’t many apples-to-apples comparisons available in terms of race sims. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they work out their kinks over the following two weeks and when Melbourne rolls around we’ll have a Verstappen pole again. The field looks close, and Max is still Max.
And as long as Lawson isn’t Perez they’ll be in a good position for the WCC.
Yeah, and they (with Max) are notoriously good at dialing in a car across practice sessions. I’m cautiously thinking they will be better off than they are now, but with at least McLaren/Ferrari right there, they can’t afford to be anything other than good
I saw some data that indicated they were sandbagging to a certain extent, but they also did the least amount of running out of all the teams I believe due to issues like oil leakage, so we really don’t have enough to go on. I’m sort of already assuming that they will end up being the fastest team, but that might well be my Verstappen PTSD talking. The data we have at the moment suggests McLaren looks the strongest, so I’m going more off vibes. No one knows exactly how much Res Bull is holding back.
That horrible 2024 car that won the championship?
