After dominating the last two years in F1, many expect Red Bull to do the same this season as well. The team seem to have begun the campaign on the right track as they registered an emphatic 1-2 in the opening two races of the new season. Moreover, they also scored 87 points out of the 88 on offer so far. Despite such a fantastic display so far, Red Bull’s Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan has provided a pessimistic outlook for the team’s future. Monaghan suggested that 2024 could be the last year the Milton Keynes outfit dominates.
As quoted on X (formerly Twitter), Monaghan said, “If we choose to make more significant changes to the car, more options will open up for us. This is one of the reasons that pushed us to design the car with profound changes. It is probably the last big roll of the dice because, in 2025, we will have to look to 2026.”
The Briton went on to explain how easy it is to reach the “limits” of aerodynamic research, and from 2025 onwards the team could be on the verge of saturating how much faster they can make the current generation of cars. Monaghan also expressed his concerns over how the cost cap could influence the team’s gap to their rivals.
Monaghan: “You quickly find the limits in terms of aerodynamic research, at which point you have to ask yourself what you have to do and what you have to change.”
— Junaid #JB17 (@JunaidSamodien_) March 19, 2024
With a lot of money channeled into research and development, the RB20 could be the last car that the team would want to splash the cash on, given how significantly diminishing the returns would be on a “maxed-out” 2025 concept. However, since 2025 is still a season away, as things stand, Red Bull will most likely dominate the upcoming 22 races.
Which teams can dethrone Red Bull in 2025?
With the regulations now stable, the 2025 car would be an evolution of this year’s concepts across the grid. Hence, Red Bull would still hold an edge over their rivals, given how perfectly Adrian Newey seems to have nailed the design philosophy.
That being said, the fear of stagnation as explained by Paul Monaghan would give rivals like Ferrari and McLaren the impetus to close the gap. With Red Bull having seemingly exhausted their developmental route, the others could catch them realistically by the end of this season.
In Jeddah, Mercedes ran a more loaded beam wing configuration compared to Red Bull to partially compensate for their very unloaded rear wing
In contrast, Ferrari and McLaren removed their upper beam wings altogether to save drag
( u/alenpetak11, collab with @aerodynam1cs)#F1 pic.twitter.com/1ApZnuHN19
— Formula Data Analysis (@FDataAnalysis) March 19, 2024
While Ferrari and McLaren seem like the most likely candidates to end Red Bull’s dominance, Mercedes have hit a dead-end with their design concept of the ground-effect cars. Hence, their only hope most likely would be that the 2026 engine-specific regulation reset helps them embark on a better streak of performance as they did back in 2014 when the turbo-hybrid era of the sport kicked off.
