How Red Bull (Sort Of) Lost Its Grip on F1
Despite Max Verstappen's fourth consecutive World Championship, his team failed to win the constructor's title for the first time since 2021.
UPDATE (Dec. 18, 2024, 2:07 p.m.): It was announced that Sergio Pérez and Red Bull have agreed to part ways, with Liam Lawson expected to be named Pérez's replacement.
There was an excellent story by
of on Monday, which detailed the remarkable comeback of McLaren’s Formula 1 team from nearly going bankrupt just a few seasons ago to winning their first Constructors' Championship in 26 years this season. I would encourage everyone to read it here:
The flip-side of McLaren’s comeback, though, was the downfall (of sorts) for Red Bull, which had been comically dominant just a year earlier. Yes, Max Verstappen won another World Driver’s Championship — his fourth in a row, bringing him into a tie with Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel for the fourth-most all-time — but it was not nearly as comfortable as it had been in previous seasons. For instance, Verstappen’s margin of victory in 2024 (63 points over McLaren’s Lando Norris) was significantly lower than in either 2023 (290 points) or 2022 (146).
Things started out business as usual for Red Bull this season. Verstappen and teammate Sergio Pérez began the season in Bahrain finishing 1-2, the same thing they had done to kick off the 2023 campaign — and did five more times later on — en route to the most wins (21) and the highest single-season point total (860) in the history of the sport.1 But after the duo shared the podium three more times (in Saudi Arabia, Japan and China) through the season’s first five races, huge cracks began to open up in what had previously been an impenetrable wall of success.
Pérez landed outside the podium at Miami in Round 6 and never again finished better than sixth all season, posting four retirements and three other finishes in 17th place. In a sharp departure from his No. 2 finish last year, Pérez ended the season at No. 8 in the standings, his lowest placement since finishing 10th for Racing Point in 2019. It was also the worst finish by a Red Bull driver since Alex Albon in 2019.
Verstappen obviously fared better, winning a series-high nine races — more than double the total of anyone else this season. (Norris was second with four wins, finally achieving his long-awaited breakthrough season.) But everything is relative. After setting a new single-season record with 19 wins in 22 starts, Verstappen failed to crack double-digits for the first time since 2020. And of those nine victories, all but two came by Round 10 of the season.
Though he still had enough pace to claim the driver’s title, Verstappen was out-pointed by Norris from race 11 onward, part of a noticeable midseason dip for both Red Bull drivers. To illustrate, here’s the rolling 5-race average for points by both Verstappen and Pérez since 2021, their first season together as Red Bull teammates:
At one point, Verstappen dipped to his lowest rolling points-per-race average since mid-2021, and though he pulled out of it some with a late surge, he still was in substantially worse form by season’s end than in either 2022 or 2023. And Pérez was in miserable shape by season’s end, either failing to finish or finishing in double-digits seven times in the final eight races.
Both drivers’ slumps opened up the door for McLaren’s remarkable return to glory, as Team Papaya won five of the season’s last 12 races — finishing on the podium 12 total times — to slip past both Ferrari (by 14 points) and Red Bull (who finished a shocking third, 77 points back) in the final accounting.
In a lot of ways, Red Bull was cursed to regress this season from the start. Team principal Christian Horner was accused of inappropriate behavior with a female employee months before the first race — he was eventually cleared of the charge — and it was reported in early May that legendary car designer Adrian Newey would be leaving the team. With those clouds hanging overhead, the RB20 chassis suffered with balance problems and was outpaced by other teams’ development programs, trends the team never fully overcame.
But this is also the natural cycle for dominant F1 teams. Back before the 2023 season, I wrote about the life cycle of dominant runs in the driver’s championship, noting that most recent titles are actually won as part of multi-year winning streaks (with only a few exceptions). Today’s dominant team, however, can quickly become tomorrow’s third- or fourth-place outfit once it reaches a tipping point, often accelerated by new regulations or other technical changes.
It wasn’t long ago when Mercedes was the dominant organization, with Red Bull and Ferrari chasing it — and McLaren ranking far, far behind. The Silver Arrows’ decline, however, mirrored Red Bull’s rise to dominance:
Now, after Red Bull’s second-half swoon in 2024, McLaren are the constructor’s champions — and they were also surpassed by both Ferrari and Mercedes in our rolling average by season’s end. Combine that with the fact that seven-time driver’s champion Lewis Hamilton is set to join the Prancing Horse for 2025, and Newey joining Aston Martin as technical director, and change is indeed in the air as we look ahead to next season.
That’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. Less dominance by one driver or team makes for a more exciting product; a little drama never hurt anyone. And who knows? Additional struggles might also make Verstappen — and Red Bull at large — more popular than ever by having them play less of the villain.
Filed under: Formula 1
Sure, it’s a bit unfair to compare modern seasons with earlier eras, as today’s F1 schedule runs longer and awards more points than ever. But few could argue that Red Bull’s 2023 showing was not at least among the most dominant in the history of motorsports.