Christian Horner has suggested that Red Bull may not need to change much ahead of next season to maintain their F1 dominance. Last year’s title-winning car was described as a ‘cut and paste’ of their 2022 machine, which is a far cry from the situation Mercedes find themselves in as their search for a winning recipe goes on.
The Silver Arrows have relentlessly tweaked and tinkered with their cars since the ground-effect design regulations were introduced ahead of the 2022 season. But the team have only won one Grand Prix in the last two years.
Red Bull, by contrast, won 22 out of 23 Grands Prix last campaign as Max Verstappen romped to the Drivers’ Championship. And to make matters worse for their rivals, Horner claims that they hardly had to change anything from the RB18 which breezed the Constructors’ Championship the previous year.
“What you have to remember is that the RB19 had a large number of parts taken from the RB18,” he explained.
“The gearbox, a large part of the suspension and half of the chassis. It was essentially a cut and paste car last year. The most important thing we could address was the weight.
“We were so late with the new rules in 2021, because of the championship battle [with Mercedes] that the car was a bit on the heavy side in 2022. So we managed to take 20 kilos out of the car [in 2023] and remove some imperfections.”
Red Bull may find themselves in a similar situation during the current off-season, whereby they will look to stick to the design philosophy which has served them so well over the past two years. Mercedes, meanwhile, will be working their fingers to the bone after finishing with fewer than half of their rivals’ points in 2023.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who has not won a Grand Prix since 2021, claims that team principal Toto Wolff and his crop of engineers are desperate to produce a competitive car in time for the new season.
“[There is] a huge amount [of pressure], for sure,” he said. “Not just on Toto, but globally, all of us. Everyone back at the factory, a huge amount of pressure on them.
“For me, hopefully some of the race results and drives that I’ve been able to put in, I like to think that sparks inspiration for the guys; like ‘Oh, we’re almost there’, and that trickles down through the whole system.”
