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The Red Bull Formula 1 team has been put through the wringer throughout 2024 so it was no surprise that there was a palpable sense of relief on the faces of its key players when Max Verstappen delivered its first grand prix victory in 134 days in Brazil.
It was a weekend full of stress inside Red Bull, with Verstappen taking aim at critics and officials, and the team's wider arguing with McLaren took a fresh twist with the emergence of Red Bull’s claims of alleged tyre trickery.
But Verstappen’s victory has now all but assured his 2024 coronation, which should ease the worst of the pressure – and Red Bull privately thinks it may have won another battle, too.
Vindication for its tyre theory?
Red Bull continued the technical tit-for-tat between the top teams with its suspicions that multiple teams, including McLaren and Ferrari, have been adding water into the tyres to keep them cooler during races.
The Race understands Red Bull itself explored this tactic in the past before it was clamped down on, and it reckons engineers who have since moved to other teams have continued with the practice - a theory it feels observations made at the Singapore Grand Prix support.
Whatever Red Bull witnessed in Singapore led to the matter being raised with the FIA, which along with tyre supplier Pirelli has been on the lookout for any suspicious behaviour in the last couple of events.
Red Bull feels the performance of certain teams in the Brazil sprint race specifically vindicated its suspicions. Its race pace was stronger than it had been for a while, but the wet grand prix then got in the way of supporting that initial conclusion.
In terms of establishing any evidence of a shift as a result of the FIA taking a closer look at this alleged trick, Red Bull only has a small sample set to judge it on, and it was a compromised one too.
Tyre wear was higher than expected during the sprint, due to the resurfaced track and higher-than-expected temperatures, so most cars were at what Pirelli categorises as “100% wear” by the end of that race anyway.
But it’ll be interesting to see over the final three races, especially the hot ones in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, whether there is any noticeable shift in race pace performance trends after all.
Red Bull’s paranoia
Red Bull isn’t demanding the FIA confirm teams have been doing the water tyre trick or even take retrospective action against them - that’s very hard to do as there’s no tangible evidence.
All Red Bull wants is to make sure it doesn’t happen anymore - if it’s happened at all. Making representations to the FIA, combined with the fact this has now emerged publicly, means suspicions of any ongoing use of such trickery will likely be quelled as it’s now being closely monitored.
This might have just laid a little ghost to rest within Red Bull. Because even if this turns out to be nothing, Red Bull’s been searching for answers, and one less conspiracy theory to waste energy over has got to be a good thing.
That also explains why Red Bull would believe something like this is happening – beyond the fact that every team tends to suspect other teams are doing things wrong when they start doing well!
Red Bull has been extremely concerned by how suddenly its early season dominance evaporated, starting with the Miami Grand Prix in early May.
Verstappen won four of the first five races but then only three of the next 15 until Brazil. He probably would have been victorious in Miami as well, if a safety car hadn’t been perfectly timed for Lando Norris to win instead, but was already under a bit more pressure than normal.
And since the race after Miami, at Imola, Red Bull has generally found itself weaker than McLaren, which it feels has been particularly strong late in stints. After the summer break, Ferrari has become increasingly competitive as well.
Red Bull has been looking in the mirror during this period. It’s explored various aspects of its own car development, admitting it has had some correlation issues and even using pre-Miami floor designs at some points to gain a reference. There have been some corrections to its front wing and floor in response to this, which have helped a little.
But Red Bull believes that nothing has changed enough on its side to explain the drop-off it has suffered, particularly in race pace - hence a sharper focus on how its rivals have achieved their steps forward.
McLaren’s been pretty prolific with its development. This includes a trio of upgrades across the triple-header, culminating in a whole new medium-downforce rear wing that might only be used once more this season, if at all. That’s how flat-out, and well-understood, its upgrade strategy is.
Ferrari’s also managed to get on top of some core car issues, especially since the summer break, having brought a new floor to help with porpoising problems, and delved a little bit more into the flexible front wing trickery it was initially unhappy McLaren and Mercedes were getting away with.
So if rivals have added performance and better car behaviour, while Red Bull has started to hit against a ceiling, this could easily add up to the in-season swing we’ve witnessed: even if the scale of it is unusual.
But Red Bull does not believe its rivals steps can be justified by car upgrades alone.
It’s not just that Red Bull feels targeted over certain things, like the bib adjustor. It believes other teams have been able to get away with certain tricks for longer than they should have, in the interest of creating a title fight.
A huge relief
Verstappen had gone into Brazil facing a barrage of questions and quite intense, personal criticism of his racing style after a contentious race in Mexico with Norris.
Off the back of that, he accused F1 of having a nationality bias when he “claimed he doesn’t have the right passport” for the paddock - and Verstappen’s feeling of being persecuted only escalated through the weekend.
On Thursday, he was annoyed Charles Leclerc wasn’t penalised for swearing in Mexico - as Verstappen had controversially been given community service a few races ago in Singapore. One day later Leclerc was penalised but escaped with a fine because he’d apologised in the immediate aftermath.
Then there was frustration in the Brazil sprint race over the handling of a late stoppage for Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas, which sparked a virtual safety car that coincided perfectly with Oscar Piastri having already handed team-mate Norris the lead - and prevented Verstappen from attacking Piastri himself.
Verstappen then got a penalty for a VSC infringement anyway, which dropped him to fourth, costing him another point. And of course, there was the obvious anger when he was knocked out in Q2 in Sunday morning’s postponed qualifying session because of a late crash for Lance Stroll.
Once Verstappen had won the grand prix, both he and Red Bull changed their tune from strongly feeling they had been screwed over by how race control handled the aftermath of the Stroll crash to admitting they had just been super unlucky.
That showed just how big an impact the results on-track have on how people behave off-track. As soon as they won again, the pressure deflated a little, and the tone mellowed. Verstappen even delighted in taking a pop at the British media in the post-race press conference because there weren’t any in the room!
“I have a quick question here. I appreciate all of you being here, but I don't see any British press. They had to run to the airport? Or they don't know where the press conference is?” Verstappen quipped on Sunday evening.
The Race thought that was genuinely funny, and fair – our on-site team rarely make it into the Sunday press conference due to the compact scheduling post-race that means various important media commitments end up clashing.
But Verstappen had been pelted with questions in that same press conference room only a few days before, so it was valid for him to notice some of those people weren’t around when he’d just put in one of his best-ever performances.
That reaction, just like the most jubilant celebrations in parc ferme and on the podium from Verstappen and Red Bull that we can remember, showed just how important this win was to them.
Now that Red Bull has wrested control of one championship narrative back, maybe that’ll quell the paranoia that seemed to be about to reach boiling point - but the intense fight for the other title and the next titles in 2025 means any calm will not last long.
