Peter Windsor thinks there are zero chances that Red Bull Racing will not be competitive next year. The journalist sees that the team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez has all the assets for the upcoming season. However, there is one asset that makes the biggest difference at the Austrian racing team. Without this asset, Formula 1 would have looked very different in the eyes of Windsor.
Red Bull had an unprecedented season last year. In some races some teams were able to come close and there was only one race in which the Austrian team was defeated. This dominance allowed Red Bull to quickly shift focus to the RB20. “A car is actually constantly developing,” Windsor says in a livestream on his YouTube channel. ‘The important thing about Red Bull is that they have a very solid foundation. The RB20 can now be built on this.’
‘The foundations of the other teams are not so solid at all. Their concept was never right at the start of 2022,” the journalist continued. The competition therefore has a gigantic task ahead of it. Windsor predicts that the advantage will still lie with Red Bull in 2024. ‘Things are not stable and next year’s car will not be as good as the RB20. The chance that Red Bull produces a bad car, with all the information they have, is actually zero.’
Red Bull has plenty of assets up its sleeve
Nevertheless, Red Bull also seems to reach a ceiling in terms of performance at some point. The competition may still see sufficient room for development, while the Austrian racing team can actually no longer go faster. Windsor also thinks the other teams should hope for that. ‘At some point everyone has to have more or less the same car, as you can no longer draw many different conclusions. The solutions are certainly not infinite.’
Yet Windsor does not have the idea that it will all be that easy. ‘The building blocks at Red Bull are all perfect. In addition, the design of the championship also speaks to their advantage.’ The journalist is referring to the high number of races and the fact that there are only three test days prior to the season. ‘You don’t have a lot of options to mess around with things. You mainly work from race to race.’
In addition, the team from Milton Keynes has another trump card. Adrian Newey is the designer at Red Bull and that is actually the golden ticket in the eyes of Windsor. What would Formula 1 have looked like without Newey? ‘Then Formula 1 would be very competitive. Then there would be a different race winner every weekend. That is the difference Newey makes. That’s why I always say: if Ferrari had paid a billion euros five years ago, they would have already won three championships,” said Windsor.
