After returning from the summer break, the Milton Keynes team was expected to provide answers following the performance slump they found themselves managing. In the races between the summer and autumn breaks, Red Bull faced the harsh reality of having a car that was never competitive for victory, to the point of almost overshadowing Max Verstappen’s signature driving sensitivity during the years of dominance. In this scenario, the constructors’ crown has passed to McLaren, while the prospect of a possible battle for the drivers’ title has increasingly become a threat to the three-time world champion.
After the summer break, further setbacks for Red Bull
After the summer break, the championship made a stop at Max’s home race, where the Dutchman could do little, apart from the start, when compared to the faster McLaren of Lando Norris. The podium in front of his fans was a maximization of the result, bringing some smiles; something that didn’t happen in Monza. The picture of Red Bull at the Italian GP revealed a situation that few would have imagined a few months ago. On the Monza circuit, the Milton Keynes brigade was clearly the fourth-best team on the grid, lagging almost seven-tenths behind pole-sitter Norris in qualifying, in a classification that left no room for other interpretations. The current situation at Red Bull tells the story of an RB20 that, in the last four races, has confirmed the difficulties that emerged in the summer, which have further intensified, even undermining the extreme feeling that made Verstappen the ‘twelfth man on the field’ for the team. The three-time world champion has repeatedly expressed his difficulties in interpreting the car on the track. These issues have translated into inconsistent weekends and flashes of brilliance that never lasted.
During the Azerbaijan weekend, McLaren inevitably overtook Red Bull in the constructors’ standings, after taking center stage with Oscar Piastri’s second win of the season. A weekend that highlighted how much Red Bull is struggling compared to the Woking-based team, after Norris, starting from 17th on the grid, finished ahead of Max Verstappen. Baku also represented a missed opportunity for Sergio Perez, who had one of his best weekends of the year but ended with zero points after a collision with Carlos Sainz on the penultimate lap. In terms of performance, before the summer break, Red Bull still had a slight edge over McLaren in qualifying pace, but between Zandvoort and Singapore, the roles reversed.
Red Bull is now trailing by more than two-tenths in qualifying (+0.230s) behind the papaya cars, while in the race, the average deficit is three and a half tenths, with Ferrari slotting between the two teams in terms of race pace. This last figure shows that even more ground has been lost compared to the last races before the break, where the gap to McLaren on long runs was around one and a half tenths. This decline has been clearly reflected in the race results, with the peaks being limited to the second places Verstappen secured in the Netherlands and at the last GP in Singapore.
Max Verstappen continues to make the difference, but is the drivers’ championship at risk?
While the constructors’ title is bound to remain McLaren’s business with the current performance levels, the drivers’ championship picture is different. Before the summer break, the idea of including Lando Norris in the title fight was more of a fantasy than a reality.
Today, however, Max Verstappen sees his lead, which has existed since day one of this championship, as less secure than it was just a few races ago. The narrow gains Norris has made during the period when McLaren has been the best car on the track show that Max has continued to make the difference, despite having an inferior machine to the competition. The 52-point lead in the standings doesn’t negate the fact that the six remaining GPs, plus two Sprints, place significant pressure on Red Bull and the Dutchman, who are haunted by the specter of what would be a historic turnaround in F1. Such a scenario would further, and perhaps definitively, destabilize the atmosphere within an already fragile environment, following off-track incidents from the past year. The Milton Keynes team is therefore called upon to provide a significant technical response at the Austin race, where teams will bring the last evolutionary updates of the season, which in Red Bull’s case could prove crucial for the outcome of this championship.
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