Despite dominating the 2023 F1 world championship by quite a margin, Max Verstappen has recently ruled out a repeat of this in 2024. This is primarily because rivals such as McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, and Aston Martin began to catch up and close the gap.
Speaking about this, Verstappen said on BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast, “Yeah for sure I mean, they’re not stupid. They’re all learning and of course the longer you keep the regulations the same, the closer it will get because the people will start to understand what direction they need to develop in.” Admittedly, all the rival teams showed progress this season one way or another.
While Aston Martin were brilliant in the first half of the season, their second half derailed their performance. Whereas, McLaren started the year in the worst way possible. However, they also coped brilliantly in the latter half.
As for Mercedes, they were the most consistent team apart from Red Bull. Despite this, there is more than one sector where Toto Wolff would want his team to improve. Lastly, Ferrari showed important upgrades this season and were the only team to snatch a win from Red Bull this year.
Max Verstappen and Red Bull learned from their mistakes
While Max Verstappen and Red Bull dominated the whole season, they couldn’t replicate the same in this year’s Singapore GP. The race in Marina Bay Circuit was a disaster for the Austrian team and they took lessons from it.
Now, the Dutchman has revealed that they learned from their mistakes in Singapore and are working on not to repeat such in the future. They primarily faced issues with the set-up of the car in street tracks, but the three-time world champion believes the upcoming RB20 is unlikely to face such issues.
Furthermore, the team recognized that they wouldn’t need to build the car from scratch, but evolve to make the RB20 mightier. On this, team principal Christian Horner said as per Motorsport.com, “Evolution not revolution. All areas have been revisited in the car, and we can’t afford to have any complacency.”
Amazing to come home to a factory full of Champions Thank you everyone @redbullracing for making such an incredible season possible pic.twitter.com/b5lfEL7BvU
— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) December 14, 2023
Moreover, he also added that they have worked enough in the car for the last 12 months, therefore, they need to polish every sector of the car to bring out the beast in RB20.
All in all, Horner’s team is at a certain advantage for the next season, despite this, the British boss understands that things might not be very easy for them in 2024.
