Former F1 world champion Damon Hill thinks that it is disadvantageous for Red Bull Racing to win everything, because the striving emotion to get better and overtake the competition is not present. According to Hill, the team can be happy with its fantastic start to the season, but he wonders where the motivation is to improve.
Red Bull announced after its very successful 2023 season that it does not expect to repeat it in 2024. Max Verstappen, Sergio Pérez and Christian Horner indicated that the competition would probably get much closer, but so far this does not seem to be the case. The Austrian team took a one-two finish in Bahrain and in Jeddah, and the competition didn’t stand a chance. It looks like Red Bull will pick up where they left off in 2023. “A car designed for a championship will work on any track or surface,” Hill says on the F1 Nation podcast.
“It’s like a cleaning product, it cleans all surfaces, and it doesn’t matter where you throw it,” the Brit laughs. Red Bull only lost one point in Saudi Arabia, namely the point for the fastest race lap. That went to Charles Leclerc. For the rest, the three-time world champion’s team claimed all the points. “It’s nice when you can start your season and your Constructors’ Championship with a one-two, so the team feels great,” Hill continued. ‘But it’s quite difficult to find that drive to strive because when you come second or get beaten you don’t like it that much. Then you want to change that situation and there is a lot of motivation for that.’
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‘Where is that motivation?’
In Hill’s opinion, there is not much left for a dominant team like Red Bull to strive for, because it wins every time. “But when you win, then… I know they will still try very hard to improve and make small wins because they have to. But at the same time, where’s the motivation?’ Hill wonders. “The only motivation is that if you look over your shoulder and you see that no one is going to overtake you, then you can almost go on holiday,” says the 1996 world champion.
Many find it striking that there is now so much criticism of Red Bull’s dominance, while Mercedes was the dominant team at the start of the hybrid era. The dominance of the German racing team lasted no less than seven years, and at the beginning of the century Ferrari was the sole ruler. It is expected that the 2026 rule change will change a lot again. In the 2025 season the focus will mainly be on the following year, to prepare the cars for a new era. Until then, many are gloomy for Red Bull’s competition.
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