Red Bull F1 PROBLEM ignored for years hitting home

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Red Bull PROBLEM ignored for years hitting home

Are the walls closing in at Red Bull?

Matthew Hobkinson Lead Editor

F1 Editor & Journalist

Wednesday 31 July 2024 21:00

A major issue which Red Bull has ignored in recent years is beginning to bite the reigning champions, according to one pundit.

Since clinching the drivers' championship in dramatic circumstances in 2021, the team and star driver Max Verstappen have coasted to further titles.

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In 2023, only Carlos Sainz (Singapore) stopped the team from making it a clean sweep of victories at every single race track in the calendar year.

However, despite another blistering start in 2024, the rest of the F1 grid have pulled Red Bull back into their sights, with the likes of McLaren and Mercedes both preventing the reigning champions from running away with the title.

Max Verstappen won all but three races in 2023

Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez were the only other two drivers to claim victory

Red Bull fail to deal with Sergio Perez problem

And according to Sky Sports' Bernie Collins, this is an issue that Red Bull only have themselves to blame for failing to get a proper handle on.

"When we look at the history: 2021, the first championship that Max won, 2022, the first championship that Red Bull won, we’re now in year three of Red Bull potentially winning world championships," she told the Sky Sports F1 podcast.

"In none of those years have they really tried to figure out getting this second driver – you think it’s been Checo [Perez] all that time – up to speed.

"They’ve always relied on the car being fast enough that Verstappen can just drive off into the sunset.

"So they’ve had three years to get on top of this. This is now year three that they could have been on top of getting the team working well together and making sure both guys are scoring points, which the others have been doing.

"This isn’t a new problem," she continued. "It’s new in the fact that they don’t have the advantage [they once had], but anyone at Red Bull that didn’t see the disadvantage feeding away, as regulations remain stable and they’ve got less wind tunnel time and all these things.

"There should have been potentially more foresight to get that car and driver working well, how do they get the best out of that combination?

"Nobody in that second seat at Red Bull since Verstappen’s been in seat one have been really fit to step up to the mark."

Perez has fallen to seventh in the standings, and has less than half of Verstappen's championship-leading points tally. In the constructors', Red Bull's risk of keeping Perez could be to their detriment with McLaren just 42 points behind.

Red Bull Max Verstappen F1 Sergio Perez Carlos Sainz