Red Bull have reportedly conceded defeat to McLaren in the F1 2024 Constructors’ Championship, with a senior figure quoted as saying a fourth title for Max Verstappen is “all that counts now.”
Having produced the most dominant season in history in 2023, winning 21 out of a possible 22 races as Verstappen eased to a third consecutive World Championship, Red Bull had been expected to crush the opposition once again in F1 2024.
Red Bull concede defeat to McLaren with focus on Max Verstappen?
Yet despite starting the season with four victories from the first five races – including three one-two finishes for Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Japan – Red Bull have faded dramatically over recent months.
Verstappen is without a win for the last six races, his longest drought since the 2020 season, with his most recent victory occurring at the Spanish Grand Prix on June 23.
With eight races remaining, Verstappen’s lead over Lando Norris has been cut to 62 points, with Red Bull now just eight ahead of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship.
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Next weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix could see Red Bull lose the lead of the Constructors’ standings for the first time since May 2022.
Red Bull’s woes continued at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where Verstappen finished a distant sixth – 37.9 seconds behind race winner Charles Leclerc – at the circuit where he secured a record-breaking 10th consecutive victory in F1 2023.
Verstappen went on to sound the alarm after the race, telling media including PlanetF1.com that both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship will slip away from Red Bull if the situation is not rectified.
He said: “At the moment, both championships are not realistic.
“We have to turn it around and it’s not easy to do that very quickly, and then if we can put that on the car, then it becomes more driveable.
“I’ve said a lot and now it’s up to the team to come with a lot of changes with the car, because we basically went from a very dominant car to an undriveable car in the space of six to eight months.
“So that is very weird for me and need to really turn the car upside down.”
According to Swiss-German publication Blick, a senior figure at Red Bull has already given up hope of holding off McLaren’s charge in the Constructors’ Championship with the focus now on defending Verstappen’s own title.
A report quotes an unnamed individual, described only as a member of Red Bull’s top management, quoted before the race at Monza as saying of the Constructors’ title: “We can forget about this championship.
“All that counts now is Max’s fourth title.”
Speaking to Dutch publication De Telegraaf, Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko offered hope that Verstappen pinpointed the RB20’s “weakness” during the Italian GP weekend, raising hopes that the team can bring a fix to guard against the McLaren threat.
He said: “Max recognised on Saturday where the weakness of the car is.
“Together with the engineers, a decision was made on how to improve the car and make it competitive again.
“We just need to find out which part made the car worse.
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Verstappen’s father, the former F1 driver Jos, has been a vocal critic of the team’s mid-season slump and revealed ahead of Monza that his son had raised concerns over the car’s balance even during Red Bull’s strong start to the season.
Jos Verstappen is NOT impressed with the way Red Bull's season has developed.https://t.co/DI03BNKhyB#F1 #MaxVerstappen #RedBull #DutchGP pic.twitter.com/lEhaL7bMFw
— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) August 26, 2024
Verstappen Sr fears Red Bull are acting “a bit too late”, telling the Dutch-language De Coen en Sander show: “First of all, I think all the updates that have been brought this year, that they have not brought what they thought they would bring.
“And because of that, you do stand still a bit – and the others are making big strides anyway.
“And standing still is going backwards, certainly in Formula 1.
“At the beginning of the season where you then win races, then of course it all feels right, but [Max] also said then that the balance is not right.
“Of course, that was not brought out at the time. They then try to keep that inside. He complained about the balance there too. Max actually complained about it about three months ago.
“Only they didn’t really believe it, or they didn’t really see it.
“Now you’re actually a bit too late.”