2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[venkyhere]

Max is also a monster in high speed corners and with a good front-end he can rotate the car in his way and gain time on most of the drivers, making the difference. Remember how good he is in S1 always in Suzuka.

Of course, but he can't outrun a superior car.
this is the Suzuka esses in Sector1 in 2025. (McL39 v RB21) :


We tend to forget how spectacular the McL39 is, in all types of corners. Yes, the RB20 had one trump card over the McL38 - high speed corners (that's why Max got pole in Qatar in 2024), but not the case with the 2025 cars. The McL39 has no weakness, in no corner type is it weaker than the Redbull. As the above pic shows, it's actually better in high speed corners.

[AR3-GP]

Red Bull has been better in slow corners since Monza.

Max was also faster in the parabolica during the Monza weekend. COTA is an outlier for high speed corners. It’s a track that requires compromise. They focused on low speed.

[venkyhere]

Red Bull has been better in slow corners since Monza.

Max was also faster in the parabolica during the Monza weekend. COTA is an outlier for high speed corners. It’s a track that requires compromise. They focused on low speed.

Monza is a special case, because the 'base-downforce' level is very low, which is a Mclaren weakness and Redbull strength. However, Qatar is a track with base-downforce much greater than Monza. The 'efficiency/performance' of the floor/wings etc will shift. IMHO, we cannot consider parabolica as proof of concept. That's why I chose Austin to make the comparison (there too it was the Monza floor) in my earlier post, because the base-downforce level in COTA is high.

[Vettel165]

Interesting. Also Red Bull is quite good on the straights in areas with full power. Fresh engine could help. That last sector with very fast corners is nearly flat for the entire time. Mclaren will probably run the car higher, because they might be scared of another DNF. Only speculation of course.

[euv2]

Max is also a monster in high speed corners and with a good front-end he can rotate the car in his way and gain time on most of the drivers, making the difference. Remember how good he is in S1 always in Suzuka.

Of course, but he can't outrun a superior car.
this is the Suzuka esses in Sector1 in 2025. (McL39 v RB21) :
https://i.ibb.co/7NLqKsPs/Mc-L39-RB21-suzuka.png

We tend to forget how spectacular the McL39 is, in all types of corners. Yes, the RB20 had one trump card over the McL38 - high speed corners (that's why Max got pole in Qatar in 2024), but not the case with the 2025 cars. The McL39 has no weakness, in no corner type is it weaker than the Redbull. As the above pic shows, it's actually better in high speed corners.

The gap is very small in high speed corners but it does exist, how much of that is the car and how much is Verstappen we'll never know, RB21 was slightly faster in COTA high speed section than MCL39. MCL39 and RB21 are now very close in qualy across almost all corner speeds and profiles, with MCL39 perhaps having only a sizeable advantage in long corners and RB21 being 2-3 kmph faster on end of straights.

MCL39 continues to make the difference in setup ease for qualy, (RB21 struggled with setup in Mexico and Brazil albeit with a different floor but it's been the case all season) and also better tire/heat management in races.

[f1isgood]

I think with the Miami floor upgrade, Red Bull became the best at high-speed sections of tracks. They will be excellent at Qatar. Max also got purple S1 in Austin this year. What matters is relative standing.

[f1isgood]

Max is also a monster in high speed corners and with a good front-end he can rotate the car in his way and gain time on most of the drivers, making the difference. Remember how good he is in S1 always in Suzuka.

Of course, but he can't outrun a superior car.
this is the Suzuka esses in Sector1 in 2025. (McL39 v RB21) :
https://i.ibb.co/7NLqKsPs/Mc-L39-RB21-suzuka.png

We tend to forget how spectacular the McL39 is, in all types of corners. Yes, the RB20 had one trump card over the McL38 - high speed corners (that's why Max got pole in Qatar in 2024), but not the case with the 2025 cars. The McL39 has no weakness, in no corner type is it weaker than the Redbull. As the above pic shows, it's actually better in high speed corners.

I think McL38 was super good at Qatar. Compare Oscar and Lando's laps and they didn't lack at all in high-speed. Their drivers cant put a good lap together.

[Sergej]

For Qatar, I think the most important thing is: will Red Bull be able to arrive with a good setup ? Remember Brazil, car was actually good enough for win but they literally binned two out of three days of the weekend, nullifying chance of winning. Similar thing happened in Qatar last year, but they managed to save things after the sprint. This time they cannot afford to find the right setup after the sprint, things have to go right just from the start.

[venkyhere]

Hmm... with Redbull, the main weakness is that their simulators back in the factory that's used to arrive at the base-setup is utterly unreliable. The correlation is so bad, that putting the car in the right window for a track is a lottery - they can get it right with just FP1 alone on a sprint weekend like Austin (even there it wasn't perfect), and they can get it wrong even after a sprint race (which is a better 'test' of a setup than FP) collected data, on their second attempt, like it happened in Brazil. So yes, we should think Qatar will be a 'lottery' weekend.

[Watto]

Hmm... with Redbull, the main weakness is that their simulators back in the factory that's used to arrive at the base-setup is utterly unreliable. The correlation is so bad, that putting the car in the right window for a track is a lottery - they can get it right with just FP1 alone on a sprint weekend like Austin (even there it wasn't perfect), and they can get it wrong even after a sprint race (which is a better 'test' of a setup than FP) collected data, on their second attempt, like it happened in Brazil. So yes, we should think Qatar will be a 'lottery' weekend.

That is I think my biggest concern too. Race to race seems a bit of a lottery and their seems a bit disconnect between the Sim and track.

[AR3-GP]

The sprint format presents a lot of risk but it can work the other way too. Maybe Mclaren doesn't nail the setup. Mclaren has just had a reckoning with the DSQ in Las Vegas so there are new things for them to understand but not much time to do it.

There is speculation that Mclaren is slamming the cars to the ground now to compensate for the lack of updates. They were "too competitive" in Las Vegas (before we found out it wasn't legal).

[AR3-GP]

The earlier tweet about Mclaren's ride height in Mexico also tracks with what Lando said in the Las Vegas press conference

So it seems like lately we've been able to improve our quali pace, but our race pace has taken a bit of a hit. Even when you look at Brazil—our quali pace was very strong, but Max was still a little faster in the race. Similar this weekend—we were very, very good yesterday, like incredibly strong yesterday, but just not good enough today. So we'll see what's maybe changed over the last few weeks and what we can improve on for Qatar.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... UItiMc4rKU

[ME4ME]

I wonder which floor they'll put on Verstappens car in Qatar.

Also they better run that Honda PU hard. Nothing to lose really.

[Alexf1]

I wonder which floor they'll put on Verstappens car in Qatar.

Also they better run that Honda PU hard. Nothing to lose really.

Like Merc did in Brazil 2021 cause in both occasions it's win the race or loose the championship.

[AR3-GP]

Also they better run that Honda PU hard. Nothing to lose really.

Speaking of, do we know what PU Verstappen used in Las Vegas? What was surprising to me is that they were actually quite slow on the straights in qualifying and the race. They were no quicker than Mclaren and well behind Mercedes. I thought this was strange because you would expect to see an advantage here with a fresh PU.

I mention this because in 2021, Mercedes actually ran the PU of Bottas too hard, bricked it, and had to replace it again...So it's possible that they damaged the Brazil PU (note this is heavy speculation)