2024 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[avantman]

Mixed feelings. P2 here is well above the expectations, but on the other hand McLaren is just devastatingly quicker.
They will also bring significant upgrades to Austin, so Red Bull tech team needs all and more.

Mclaren can and should win every race from here on out. There's no upgrade in the world to compete with this. Red Bull killed their chances with 3-4 months of false updates. Max will be fighting with Ferrari and Mercedes. He can't get P2 every weekend. In fact, it's more likely that there will be weekends with 10-15 point losses. There are 3 sprint weekends left. Red Bull is awful on sprint weekends.

We're watching a championship being lost in slow motion. It is inevitable. At the end of the season, if you re-arrange the races, it will become clear how obvious it was. The first 5 race "dominance" is a fallacy. The championship is decided by the result of all 24 results. It doesn't matter if you sprinted at the start when you can't follow through for the finish.

this season of Max looks more and more like 2012 of Fernando Alonso, fighting for the title in 3rd-4th fastest car. Except for that Vettel didnt actually have outright fastest car in the second half of the championship, it was the other team, Mclaren that had the best car, Red bull and Vettel were only fastest on some tracks. Still Alonso couldn't overcome that.
Mclaren had the car to win all races since Miami. But they haven't done that, and that only can give Red bull and Max some extra hopes and confidence. In fact Mclaren advantage for the large part of this season has been far bigger than RB19 had for most of 2023. Lando could've won by 40-50s seconds today if he wanted to, or better to say, If he hadn't sh*t his racepants after his near kiss with the wall. He eased off his pace quite clearly in the 2nd stint.

[Sergej]

another crazy stat: gap Max-Lando after Miami 53 points, after Singapore 52 points

Lando gained only one point in a full 12 race streak where he had the best car while Red Bull experienced the worst technical crisis in 4-5 years

we "only" need that damn Austin correction to work

[organic]

The Austin upgrade doesn't need to do much other than restore stability. Austin is the first upgrade they'll be making in over a year with that as its primary goal. It may finally give the balance they have been aiming for with this car concept. We've seen many cars suddenly improve by huge amounts in this regulation set when you find balance. The improved aero stability should improve race pace more than qualifying pace as well

[bananapeel23]

The Austin upgrade doesn't need to do much other than restore stability. Austin is the first upgrade they'll be making in over a year with that as its primary goal. It may finally give the balance they have been aiming for with this car concept. We've seen many cars suddenly improve by huge amounts in this regulation set when you find balance

Honestly I think McLaren is so clear of Red Bull that even if they restore stability, the McLaren will still be significantly faster. It might get Max consistent P2-P4 in quali, but he really needs consistent P2s in the race to win the WDC. That requires Red Bull to be faster than both Ferrari and Piastri almost everywhere. It's a big ask from one upgrade.

Ferrari and McLaren both smoked Red Bull in terms of race pace in the last 3 races despite Red Bull being fairly stable in both Baku and Singapore. They have a big gap to make up.

[AR3-GP]

Mixed feelings. P2 here is well above the expectations, but on the other hand McLaren is just devastatingly quicker.
They will also bring significant upgrades to Austin, so Red Bull tech team needs all and more.

Mclaren can and should win every race from here on out. There's no upgrade in the world to compete with this. Red Bull killed their chances with 3-4 months of false updates. Max will be fighting with Ferrari and Mercedes. He can't get P2 every weekend. In fact, it's more likely that there will be weekends with 10-15 point losses. There are 3 sprint weekends left. Red Bull is awful on sprint weekends.

We're watching a championship being lost in slow motion. It is inevitable. At the end of the season, if you re-arrange the races, it will become clear how obvious it was. The first 5 race "dominance" is a fallacy. The championship is decided by the result of all 24 results. It doesn't matter if you sprinted at the start when you can't follow through for the finish.

overly pessimistic

Monza, Baku and Singapore should have already been weekends with 10-15 point lost, instead we lost 8-3-7 points; Baku-Singapore 10 points lost, much much better than how it should have gone

As we saw in the stretch between Miami and Hungary, Max can't keep doing Houdini acts (Imola, Spain, and Canada). The wins dried up. The car actually has to improve. Soon enough, these "damage limitations" will also dry up because the car simply isn't progressing. Red Bull hasn't had a working update all year. I'm not prepared to give them the benefit of doubt about this austin "update". It's a sprint weekend anyway. There's 2 more sprint weekends after that.
The Mclaren will be in another galaxy in Mexico. Red Bull has never gone well in Brazil.

[Paa]

Mixed feelings. P2 here is well above the expectations, but on the other hand McLaren is just devastatingly quicker.
They will also bring significant upgrades to Austin, so Red Bull tech team needs all and more.

Mclaren can and should win every race from here on out. There's no upgrade in the world to compete with this. Red Bull killed their chances with 3-4 months of false updates. Max will be fighting with Ferrari and Mercedes. He can't get P2 every weekend. In fact, it's more likely that there will be weekends with 10-15 point losses. There are 3 sprint weekends left. Red Bull is awful on sprint weekends.

We're watching a championship being lost in slow motion. It is inevitable. At the end of the season, if you re-arrange the races, it will become clear how obvious it was. The first 5 race "dominance" is a fallacy. The championship is decided by the result of all 24 results. It doesn't matter if you sprinted at the start when you can't follow through for the finish.

You are assuming that McLaren maximise everything from now on. In that case it is game over, no question.
But there is good reason to assume they won't maximise so Max just need to be sure to get as much points as possible and then hope for the best.
We don't know yet, whether Verstappen will need 8-10-12-15 or more points per race, but we can all agree that with faster car, he will be able to collect more. It doesn't need to be faster than McLaren, but the more, the better.

[Sergej]

Mclaren can and should win every race from here on out. There's no upgrade in the world to compete with this. Red Bull killed their chances with 3-4 months of false updates. Max will be fighting with Ferrari and Mercedes. He can't get P2 every weekend. In fact, it's more likely that there will be weekends with 10-15 point losses. There are 3 sprint weekends left. Red Bull is awful on sprint weekends.

We're watching a championship being lost in slow motion. It is inevitable. At the end of the season, if you re-arrange the races, it will become clear how obvious it was. The first 5 race "dominance" is a fallacy. The championship is decided by the result of all 24 results. It doesn't matter if you sprinted at the start when you can't follow through for the finish.

overly pessimistic

Monza, Baku and Singapore should have already been weekends with 10-15 point lost, instead we lost 8-3-7 points; Baku-Singapore 10 points lost, much much better than how it should have gone

As we saw in the stretch between Miami and Hungary, Max can't keep doing Houdini acts (Imola, Spain, and Canada). The wins dried up. The car actually has to improve. Soon enough, these "damage limitations" will also dry up because the car simply isn't progressing. Red Bull hasn't had a working update all year. I'm not prepared to give them the benefit of doubt about this austin "update". It's a sprint weekend anyway. There's 2 more sprint weekends after that.
The Mclaren will be in another galaxy in Mexico. Red Bull has never gone well in Brazil.

we have known that the title goes through the Austin correction for weeks now, and the last couple of races have been a much better damage limitation than what we expected, so I don't know why you are being more pessimistic than time ago, if anything at this point we should be a bit more optimistic given the few points we lost in very critical races

if Austin correction fails the title is gone, if it succeeds the title is done, but we already knew that, we didn't need this Singapore race to find out that, and in any event we knew that this race would have been extremely difficult for RB, so I don't think the picture changed after this afternoon

true that there are 3 sprint weekends but this year they are less of a problem, you can correct the setup after the sprint race, Red Bull performed decently in the sprint weekend so far.

[AR3-GP]

overly pessimistic

Monza, Baku and Singapore should have already been weekends with 10-15 point lost, instead we lost 8-3-7 points; Baku-Singapore 10 points lost, much much better than how it should have gone

As we saw in the stretch between Miami and Hungary, Max can't keep doing Houdini acts (Imola, Spain, and Canada). The wins dried up. The car actually has to improve. Soon enough, these "damage limitations" will also dry up because the car simply isn't progressing. Red Bull hasn't had a working update all year. I'm not prepared to give them the benefit of doubt about this austin "update". It's a sprint weekend anyway. There's 2 more sprint weekends after that.
The Mclaren will be in another galaxy in Mexico. Red Bull has never gone well in Brazil.

we have known that the title goes through the Austin correction for weeks now, and the last couple of races have been a much better damage limitation than what we expected, so I don't know why you are being more pessimistic than time ago, if anything at this point we should be a bit more optimistic given the few points we lost in very critical races

if Austin correction fails the title is gone, if it succeeds the title is done, but we already knew that, we didn't need this Singapore race to find out that, and in any event we knew that this race would have been extremely difficult for RB, so I don't think the picture changed after this afternoon

true that there are 3 sprint weekends but this year they are less of a problem, you can correct the setup after the sprint race, Red Bull performed decently in the sprint weekend so far.

It's a good point about the new sprint format (not locked into setup). I suppose I can be slightly more optimistic about this.

We were burned by the Hungary update (Which was supposed to put them 2 tenths ahead of Mclaren) so they will have to prove themselves in Austin.

[bananapeel23]

As we saw in the stretch between Miami and Hungary, Max can't keep doing Houdini acts (Imola, Spain, and Canada). The wins dried up. The car actually has to improve. Soon enough, these "damage limitations" will also dry up because the car simply isn't progressing. Red Bull hasn't had a working update all year. I'm not prepared to give them the benefit of doubt about this austin "update". It's a sprint weekend anyway. There's 2 more sprint weekends after that.
The Mclaren will be in another galaxy in Mexico. Red Bull has never gone well in Brazil.

Luckily for Red Bull there is nothing past "soon" this season. Thus damage limitation will suffice as long as 1) Norris doesn't win every race and 2) Verstappen doesn't get tangled up in an incident

1) is pretty likely to be the case. Norris simply isn't on the level on Leclerc, Hamilton and Verstappen in terms of race management and will inevitably make mistakes even if the car is the fastest at every single circuit. He nearly crashed out twice in Singapore and failed to get out of Q2 in Baku.

2) Isn't that unlikely. Verstappen could very well end up in some kind of lap 1 incident at no fault of his own unless the car improves enough for him to constantly start on the front row.

If Red Bull doesn't improve at all this season, I'd say the WDC is like 60/40 in favour of Verstappen. If Red Bull makes a good step in Austin, it's more like 80/20.

[MYsee]

Mixed feelings. P2 here is well above the expectations, but on the other hand McLaren is just devastatingly quicker.
They will also bring significant upgrades to Austin, so Red Bull tech team needs all and more.

Mclaren can and should win every race from here on out. There's no upgrade in the world to compete with this. Red Bull killed their chances with 3-4 months of false updates. Max will be fighting with Ferrari and Mercedes. He can't get P2 every weekend. In fact, it's more likely that there will be weekends with 10-15 point losses. There are 3 sprint weekends left. Red Bull is awful on sprint weekends.

We're watching a championship being lost in slow motion. It is inevitable. At the end of the season, if you re-arrange the races, it will become clear how obvious it was. The first 5 race "dominance" is a fallacy. The championship is decided by the result of all 24 results. It doesn't matter if you sprinted at the start when you can't follow through for the finish.

You are assuming that McLaren maximise everything from now on. In that case it is game over, no question.
But there is good reason to assume they won't maximise so Max just need to be sure to get as much points as possible and then hope for the best.
We don't know yet, whether Verstappen will need 8-10-12-15 or more points per race, but we can all agree that with faster car, he will be able to collect more. It doesn't need to be faster than McLaren, but the more, the better.

This battle doesn't get interesting until Max has a DNF once and could go away if Norris DNF a race. Even then, Norris/McLaren have been prone to silly mistakes during races and they haven't maximized results despite having the fastest car. McLaren's has also been avoiding making major upgrades as the car has found a "sweet spot" relative to the competition.

It's not the best way to win and doesn't feel as good as the car has fallen behind in development. But if things go as they have, Max should secure the WDC. It's good for the narrative and to talk about it every week but Max is still ahead and Norris hasn't made the inroads he needed to in the last 12 races.

Does the car need to improve? Yes. The Austin upgrade needs to allow Max to finish 2nd for the remaining races and the car does not seem off from that (not saying it has to be the 2nd fastest car, it just needs to be that in Max's hands).

Even today, despite having a "rocket ship", Oscar finished 20 seconds behind Max. I also wonder how much, like Zandvoort, did Max just run his own race rather than maximizing his laps (once he knew he couldn't get Norris but was clear of the field). In Baku, Checo kept up with both Oscar/Leclerc and would have likely finished second.

[Watto]

I certainly think a lot depends how much red bull recovers in Austin and how much they really understand their issues.

What was essential a 30+ sec lead to Lando without traffic will be a lot to claw back.

Add that Ferrari and Merc might fight for the odd win too . It also perhaps means races where Max may finish 4,5,6 etc.

A lot has to go right for Lando at the same time the gap can quickly come undone too

[AR3-GP]

3 second pit stop for Max. I don't get it.

[pantherxxx]

I think Max will easily win the championship. Let me explain why. Let's assume Norris scores an average of 18 points per weekend for the rest of the season. That’s only 108 points. Even if Max scores just a little more than half of that—57 points—he will still win the championship. So, unless Norris wins every race and faces no competition, Verstappen will win. This was Red Bull’s weakest track on paper, yet Max still finished 2nd on the podium. After the Austin upgrade, Red Bull could become extremely competitive again and potentially outscore Norris. In Baku, Pérez in the Red Bull had identical race pace to McLaren, even though McLaren had the mini DRS trick, which they won’t have anymore.

[Paa]

This battle doesn't get interesting until Max has a DNF once and could go away if Norris DNF a race.

I really don't get these quotes. It is extremely tight right now, actually Max doesn't win it as things currently are (ie: looking at last 5 race performance average).
We currently hope that there will be a significant and working upgrade to get back into the fight. But it is not a given, we are relying on that assumption.
Then we can re-evaluate after Austin how tight this actually looks to be.

[avantman]

I certainly think a lot depends how much red bull recovers in Austin and how much they really understand their issues.

What was essential a 30+ sec lead to Lando without traffic will be a lot to claw back.

Add that Ferrari and Merc might fight for the odd win too . It also perhaps means races where Max may finish 4,5,6 etc.

A lot has to go right for Lando at the same time the gap can quickly come undone too

there is no way red bull could recover their deficit to mclaren in tire deg, because it has been very significant ever since miami, where mclaren brought their B-spec car to the track. red bull can find some quali pace, some race pace, to be in better position to fight against and fend off mercedes and ferrari, but there won't be any fight against mclaren. these cars are in different class and have been for a while, no upgrade will close that gap, its literally impossible. even if max outqualifies lando on every circuit, or jumps ahead of him on the start, lando will do to max what he did in zandvoort. you can overtake quite easily on all circuits left on the calendar. mexico city might be the only exception, and this track is also my biggest hope for max to extend the lead. he has won the '21 championship with his exceptional move on the start in mexico in 2021 effectively. who knows, me might do it again.