Red Bull had not taken a single step wrong throughout the season so far until the Singapore GP, where neither Max Verstappen nor Sergio Perez managed to get out of Q2. There have been lots of discussions regarding whether the new Technical Directives by the FIA had a role to play in this downfall. However, Toto Wolff – drawing from his own experience at Singapore, believes that Red Bull will never actually know why they failed at Singapore GP.
Mercedes were at the peak of their dominance during 2015 – the silver arrows were dominating on most of the circuits, except Singapore. Toto Wolff mentioned this scenario and explained that even after dominating the whole season, Mercedes failed to be amongst the front runners at Singapore quite a few times.
This is exactly what happened to Red Bull as well. The Milton Keynes outfit have won each of the 15 races held so far this season. This is the first time that it seems like the 2023 season can have a different winner.
Toto Wolff explains the Red Bull disaster
Following the Qualifying session, Toto Wolff appeared on the Post-Qualifying Show, where he was asked by Will Buxton how exactly a team can dominate everywhere but fail to perform at Singapore.
Wolff had a simple reply, “We didn’t know! And I bet they don’t know.” As per the Austrian team boss, it is a mystery to the teams themselves why their cars fail to perform at the Marina Bay Street Circuit even when it performs everywhere else and it doesn’t have anything to do with the technical directives.
However, Christian Horner is trying his best to understand why Red Bull had such a disaster suddenly. But even for him, the loss of pace in the RB19 was very confusing. Horner said, “It’s very very confusing to have dropped the amount of pace we have. The car is not responding to changes – understeer, oversteer, braking issues.”
An opportunity opens up for Ferrari and Mercedes
Following the Qualifying Session, Verstappen himself admitted that it was a shock to him. He explained that he knew that it would be tough for him to put his car on a pole, but he never expected this bad of a result.
With neither of the Red Bulls in the top 10, this has opened the door for either Ferrari or Mercedes to make their mark on the 2023 season. Both of the teams would be desperate to claim their first victory in a long time.
