The last few years have been dominant ones for Red Bull Racing, their brilliant precision engineering seeing them rise to the top of the pile and open up a big gap on the rest. But this year has been rather different.
On the one hand, Max Verstappen has now clinched the driver’s championship for the fourth successive year. However, while his wins in the 2022 and 2023 seasons came in a car that utterly dominated and delivered the Constructor’s Championship to Red Bull, this particular double will not be occurring this year.
Instead, as the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi approaches, the McLaren Mercedes team is in poll position to win the Constructor’s title, with Ferrari the only team capable of stopping them. These teams have 640 and 619 points respectively, whereas Red Bull has 581.
On their own, these figures only begin to hint at what has happened. When the season began, Red Bull raced clear, with Verstappen himself winning seven of the first ten races. However, he then won none of the next ten,
All this happened against a backdrop of Red Bull chief designer Adrian Newey announcing his departure in May over misconduct allegations against team boss Christian Horner, and, while he won’t formally leave until the New Year, he has been focusing on projects away from F1. In his absence, performance has deteriorated.
By focusing on Verstappen, Red Bull has managed to get their man over the line, helped by the fact that he returned to winning ways in Brazil and Qatar. But with both McLaren and Ferrari improving their technical game, the underlying issues Red Bull now faces are evident. Both championships are likely to elude them in 2025.
It will be just the third time in the 21st century that the winning driver is not from the champion constructor. The last of these was three years ago, in the first of Verstappen’s current run, when he secured a highly controversial final lap win to pinch the title under the nose of Lewis Hamilton, preventing Mercedes from completing the double.
Before that, 2008 Hamilton’s maiden championship in a McLaren in 2008 came despite Ferrari taking the team prize.