Red Bull continues to push on the development of the RB19 even if the team from Milton Keynes has already brought home the sixth Constructors’ title in its history and in Qatar it will be able to close the game of Max Verstappen’s third drivers’ world championship in a row already in the Sprint Race of Saturday. The 2023 season will go down in the archives as a most likely unrepeatable championship, with only one… black hole: the Singapore GP when Carlos Sainz with the Ferrari SF-23 managed to interrupt the record sequence of consecutive successes of the extraordinary Dutch driver.
“I think it is impossible to do better than what we are achieving – admitted the team principal, Christian Horner – we are riding a wave on which we try to stay as long as possible, but we know that F1 is constantly changing: we can seeing how there are teams that are climbing back up very quickly and others that are on the way down. We continue to push beyond our limits.”
Horner doesn’t say it, but he makes it clear that the dominant cycle could weaken, although in Milton Keynes there is no drop in tension, but the desire to continue a momentum that is producing record results both for the qualities of the RB19 and for the superior capabilities of Max Verstappen.
“Last year we already showed that we were very strong – continued Christian – but we maintained the momentum because in 90% of the races we were constantly in the top positions despite having only made targeted developments on the car. The regulations have remained stable , so we used the same gearbox as in 2022, and the chassis is also mostly the same as last year, so there has been a lot of technological transfer from one championship to another, a sign that we have developed the car efficiently, reducing its weight and maintaining a high performance threshold on almost all the circuits we raced on.”
Red Bull RB19: There are two options for bringing fresh air into the cockpit, depending on the climate at different tracks
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
Horner’s photograph is truthful, taking into account that Red Bull is carrying an indisputable technical advantage that it built last year, being able to rely on the inconstancy of rival teams, taking into account that during the 2023 season there has never been a real challenger for the role of second force, with continuous alternations that saw Aston Martin, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren mix without showing real supremacy, to the point that the world champion team was not affected in the slightest by the restrictions on tunnel tests in wind due to the penalty that was triggered for non-compliance with the 2021 Budget Cap.
In this dominant framework, Red Bull has never stopped the evolution of the RB19, while the technical staff directed by Pierre Waché could have directed all resources, human and financial, towards next year’s car.
Red Bull carried out aerodynamic tests at Suzuka, after introducing a new floor on the RB 19
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
We had the demonstration at Suzuka where, although Adrian Newey was absent on holiday in Italy, the team brought two versions of the floor, introducing a new geometry of the trailing edge of the pavement. In the free trials, comparative tests were carried out with the standard solution, making extensive use of the flow viz paint to analyze the flow trend.
Red Bull is a constantly evolving construction site: in fact, every new development is not necessarily aimed only at today, but is much more likely to be preparatory to next season, so as not to lose the advantage that Verstappen has acquired on the field. In other words: the opponents will be able to get closer, but it seems unrealistic to think of breaking the hegemony of Milton Keynes.
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