Max Verstappen’s Championship Under Threat as Red Bull’s Kryptonite Gets Exposed

Red Bull aced 2023 with Adrian Newey’s dominant RB19, but the developments after it created the revolutionary RB20, which isn’t as effective. The no-sidepod design that failed Mercedes became Newey’s calling, with a relatively failed outcome. Though Max Verstappen is sufficiently maximizing its advantages, he is no longer the dominant leader. Ferrari and McLaren have nearly caught up and Red Bull’s bold design move no longer seems smart.

In 2023, Red Bull won 21 out of 22 races, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz cutting their perfect run. The field has converged massively this year with Ferrari (2 wins) and McLaren (1 win) already taking 3 wins in 8 races from Verstappen. This makes former Aston Martin strategy engineer Bernie Collins reveal how F1’s most successful designer’s radical creation hinders them from upgrading and fixing the now-volatile car.

“I think that the big worry for Red Bull is they started the year with this very different concept car to what we’ve seen before,” Collins said on the Sky F1 podcast. “Now we’re starting to hear little things like, ‘We’ve not quite got the correlation right’, or ‘We’re not quite getting upgrades working as expected.’ All these little things with a different concept car are not to guarantee it. I saw a different concept, and I thought to myself, that’s a risk.”

With Charles Leclerc only 31 points short of Verstappen, the championship battle is the Dutchman’s to lose. Red Bull’s constructors’ hopes will soon be out of the window with a faulting RB20 and a struggling Sergio Perez.

Max Verstappen claims Red Bull “don’t understand” pressing RB20 issues

The Monaco GP was an eye-opener for the Milton Keynes outfit. ‘The Max factor’, as Helmut Marko calls it, couldn’t see their plans through. Sergio Perez struggled even more than the RB20 couldn’t handle the bumpy street circuit. With the Canadian GP getting closer, Max Verstappen’s dark analysis isn’t helping Red Bull.

“It is a fundamental problem, so it is not something that will be fixed within weeks,” Verstappen said in Monaco. “We need to understand what it is because we clearly don’t understand it. But we will work hard to find the problem and then try to get rid of it. I don’t know if we can do it this year, but hopefully for next year.”

This is the time when Red Bull direly needs a holistic team effort. Their technical side is no longer good enough to cover up for the lack of competence in other places. Can Verstappen still manage to keep the championship trophy away from Ferrari?