With the level of dominance Max Verstappen is currently having, thanks to Red Bull’s mighty RB-19, chances are for the Dutchman to cruise towards his third consecutive world championship. However, the Chief Technical officer of Red Bull, Adrian Newey is reluctant to jinx the chances.
Red Bull has been absolutely dominant with Verstappen on the grid after the new regulations were laid out. Except for the first few races when the RB-19 had to deal with reliability issues, other than that they have been indomitable.
The Milton-Keynes-based team is currently leading the world championship with a win streak that they started in Abu Dhabi last season. The recently concluded Austrian GP victory marked their tenth consecutive race win in F1.
They are currently one win away from matching McLaren on the most wins recorded. With everything going in their way at the moment, Newey is not worried about the records. Instead, he’s worried about Red Bull losing grip.
Newey is skeptical of winning the championship with Red Bull
The Red Bull engineer, Newey has recently opened up on how he doesn’t want to jinx the 2023 championship citing the 1999 championship loss he suffered with McLaren.
Speaking about it in the recent F1 Nation podcast, the British engineer said, “What has happened, this could reverse so. We have been there before, [19]99. We were leading going into Silverstone. Michael [Schumacher] had his accidents, Mika [Hakkinen] was well ahead of him.”
And that is Win 101 🏆 #AustrianGP @vladimirrys pic.twitter.com/Wxtn22YjIe
— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) July 2, 2023
“Then we fell kind of asleep a bit at McLaren, made silly mistakes and it went down to the wire. So you have to be a little bit careful of it. Relaxing and it might look smooth on the outside,” concluded the Chief Technical Officer at Red Bull.
As things stand, the defending champions are at a disadvantage because of the penalty they have due to the budget cap breach in 2021. This gives the rivals a great chance to catch up.
What happened in the 1999 F1 season?
The 1999 F1 season has been a lesson for Newey. Despite leading both the world championships with few races to go, McLaren ended up losing, while Hakkinen narrowly escaped his loss.
By the end of the season, Ferrari overcame the deficit to beat McLaren by 4 points, as the Prancing Horse picked up 128 points against the Woking team’s 124.
On the other hand, Hakkinen managed to keep his lead by two points as he finished on 76 points, compared to Eddie Irvine’s 74.
All in all, it could all flip for Red Bull if Aston Martin or Mercedes catches up by the end of this season and this is what Adrian Newey is skeptical about. Like the 1999 story of Ferrari and McLaren.
