2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[marcel171281]

it didn't make steps with 15 or so changes it wont make much impression with whatever they have next ,just like last year

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

[Jdn1327]

it didn't make steps with 15 or so changes it wont make much impression with whatever they have next ,just like last year

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

Almost enough to make it seem suspicious

[Emag]

it didn't make steps with 15 or so changes it wont make much impression with whatever they have next ,just like last year

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

Almost enough to make it seem suspicious

If you look things in isolation ignoring everything that has happened before their surge, then maybe. But McLaren has been putting investment after investment for the last 6 years. On top of that, they've poached talents all around the paddock. It was honestly disgraceful for them to be where they were at the start of 2023 already, because almost the same team of people managed to build a much better car later that same season, proving how important resource management is aside of everything else.

You need the right people at the right positions. No team in this sport has ever seen success for one specific reason. It's a collective of reasons that when put together, produce a team which just operates with high efficiency in everything. McLaren started with assigning Andrea Stella as TP and then he improved the team on this aspect everywhere else.

It's still quite early to completely discard this season after one really unrepresentative race. We haven't seen the teams run without having to take compromises into consideration like they had to for Melbourne. One race is too small of a sample to draw conclusions from anyway. Had 2019 started in Bahrain, people would think Ferrari would be the championship contenders after race 1.

Even if it turns out that McLaren does have an edge over everyone else, assuming no scandals are unearthed since people everywhere are just jumping at every possibility to call them cheaters, you also have to give credit where credit is due. Nobody likes a team that does too good. It takes away from the spectacle. It wasn't fun with RedBull on early 2010s. Definitely wasn't fun with Mercedes for most of the last decade. And it wasn't fun in 2023 either. However, every team in F1 is trying to do their absolute best every season. It's up to the others to step up the game.

[Jdn1327]

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

Almost enough to make it seem suspicious

If you look things in isolation ignoring everything that has happened before their surge, then maybe. But McLaren has been putting investment after investment for the last 6 years. On top of that, they've poached talents all around the paddock. It was honestly disgraceful for them to be where they were at the start of 2023 already, because almost the same team of people managed to build a much better car later that same season, proving how important resource management is aside of everything else.

You need the right people at the right positions. No team in this sport has ever seen success for one specific reason. It's a collective of reasons that when put together, produce a team which just operates with high efficiency in everything. McLaren started with assigning Andrea Stella as TP and then he improved the team on this aspect everywhere else.

It's still quite early to completely discard this season after one really unrepresentative race. We haven't seen the teams run without having to take compromises into consideration like they had to for Melbourne. One race is too small of a sample to draw conclusions from anyway. Had 2019 started in Bahrain, people would think Ferrari would be the championship contenders after race 1.

Even if it turns out that McLaren does have an edge over everyone else, assuming no scandals are unearthed since people everywhere are just jumping at every possibility to call them cheaters, you also have to give credit where credit is due. Nobody likes a team that does too good. It takes away from the spectacle. It wasn't fun with RedBull on early 2010s. Definitely wasn't fun with Mercedes for most of the last decade. And it wasn't fun in 2023 either. However, every team in F1 is trying to do their absolute best every season. It's up to the others to step up the game.

No definitely not fun. But FIA can't engineer results or outcomes with technical directives to hamper teams. They did that with Red Bull in 2022 and 2023...so yeah if a team nails a regulation they can't be blamed. But Max is really saving RB right now...he is the difference.

[Cs98]

Whoever does the weather strategy for this team needs a good wake up call. Totally threw Lawson under the bus when that second shower hit with a strategy that can best be described as a hope and a prayer. It was obvious for 2-3 laps that the rain was getting too strong for slicks and that it was heading towards the rest of the track, not just S3. Still, they try to gamble with a guy that is already lacking confidence in the car where the last thing you want is for him to crash. Absolutely moronic. If anything they should've gambled towards the inter, that way you don't crash if you get it wrong. The team has the radar, not the driver, don't leave the call to go to inters to the driver. Such foolishness.

Also a lap too late on calling Max in.

[Bill]

Whoever does the weather strategy for this team needs a good wake up call. Totally threw Lawson under the bus when that second shower hit with a strategy that can best be described as a hope and a prayer. It was obvious for 2-3 laps that the rain was getting too strong for slicks and that it was heading towards the rest of the track, not just S3. Still, they try to gamble with a guy that is already lacking confidence in the car where the last thing you want is for him to crash. Absolutely moronic. If anything they should've gambled towards the inter, that way you don't crash if you get it wrong.

Also a lap too late on calling Max in.

redbull have always had good strategies especially with Max ,if you want to witness a horror show you should take a trip to italy and you will meet the likes of ferrari and racing bull

[Cs98]

Whoever does the weather strategy for this team needs a good wake up call. Totally threw Lawson under the bus when that second shower hit with a strategy that can best be described as a hope and a prayer. It was obvious for 2-3 laps that the rain was getting too strong for slicks and that it was heading towards the rest of the track, not just S3. Still, they try to gamble with a guy that is already lacking confidence in the car where the last thing you want is for him to crash. Absolutely moronic. If anything they should've gambled towards the inter, that way you don't crash if you get it wrong.

Also a lap too late on calling Max in.

redbull have always had good strategies especially with Max ,if you want to witness a horror show you should take a trip to italy and you will meet the likes of ferrari and racing bull

It's all well and good to claim that, but I stand by my criticism of today's strategy performance. It was shocking.

[Macklaren]

Nobody likes a team that does too good. It takes away from the spectacle. It wasn't fun with RedBull on early 2010s. Definitely wasn't fun with Mercedes for most of the last decade. And it wasn't fun in 2023 either. However, every team in F1 is trying to do their absolute best every season. It's up to the others to step up the game.

True but the 2026 regs should shake things up immediately next year. If the first race of 2026 also looks like this, then your concern is warranted

[bananapeel23]

it didn't make steps with 15 or so changes it wont make much impression with whatever they have next ,just like last year

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

Calling it one eureka moment feels pretty false. McLaren was nowhere in 2022, started out nowhere in 2023 and ended up as consistent podium finishers by the end of 2023. They even got a few poles and won a sprint race in 2023 if I'm not mistaken.

Early 2024 was a small regression from McLaren, but they were absolutely on a consistent upwards trajectory all throughout 2023 and 2024. I would not say it was a single Eureka moment, but rather very consistent progress and a very solid understanding of the regulations. They have still not brought a single bad upgrade since late 2023.

[FittingMechanics]

Calling it one eureka moment feels pretty false. McLaren was nowhere in 2022, started out nowhere in 2023 and ended up as consistent podium finishers by the end of 2023. They even got a few poles and won a sprint race in 2023 if I'm not mistaken.

Early 2024 was a small regression from McLaren, but they were absolutely on a consistent upwards trajectory all throughout 2023 and 2024. I would not say it was a single Eureka moment, but rather very consistent progress and a very solid understanding of the regulations. They have still not brought a single bad upgrade since late 2023.

Fully agreed.

McLaren seems to have been slow with their initial car development before season start in 2023 and 2024. In both years they brought big, almost B spec cars during the season. Possibly because they fired Key so the real development was behind schedule.

In 2023 it was the update in Austria where only Norris had the upgrade and he finished in P4. During the 2023 there were further upgrades that improved the pace, McLaren usually deployed them as soon as possible with Piastri often getting them a race behind.

This continued in 2024, where the car started slow but in Miami it got their big upgrade. Then they continued to build on that, bringing various improvements, new subvariants of wings for different load levels, etc. It was very methodical and patient, for example they suffered in Spa until they built a proper low drag rear wing.

It seems that McLaren has the best correlation and seems that each new iteration brings a lot of performance. Stella before the season said that their data seems to show that their performance is still linearly improving. Meaning that they are not seeing diminishing returns so far. To me that seemed liked a massively positive comment because McLaren had unmatched "performance improvement" in 2023 and 2024, so seeing the same trend continue would mean they are clearly ahead.

We will see if this ends up being true, but having 0.4s in qualy and having 1s+ in race pace on a 75 second lap looks extremely dominant.

[Juzh]

it didn't make steps with 15 or so changes it wont make much impression with whatever they have next ,just like last year

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

Calling it one eureka moment feels pretty false. McLaren was nowhere in 2022, started out nowhere in 2023 and ended up as consistent podium finishers by the end of 2023. They even got a few poles and won a sprint race in 2023 if I'm not mistaken.

Early 2024 was a small regression from McLaren, but they were absolutely on a consistent upwards trajectory all throughout 2023 and 2024. I would not say it was a single Eureka moment, but rather very consistent progress and a very solid understanding of the regulations. They have still not brought a single bad upgrade since late 2023.

Agreed. Mclaren has shown by far the most consistent upgrade path of any team in the last few years. I think their new wind tunnel is helping them massively. The cologne one they used previously is not fit for purpose anymore it seems.

In regards to the RBR, I will say race result is much better than I anticipated on Friday, kudos to the team. However mclaren is still easily ahead by a big margin. Their low to medium speed performance in on a different planet compared to everyone else and has been since miami last year, but I actually believe it will be even worse this year. Last year RB20 had one distinct advantage, it had the most outright downforce of any car on the grid, so at least in 200+ kmh corners the car was very competitive (and usually the fastest). This year mclaren has caught them in this area as well and they traded nothing in return, so low speed advantage comes into play harder still.
Next race in China with all those slow and long radius corners could move them even further ahead of RBR.

Lawson was absolutely terrible. When he was in clean air and on newer tyres than Max he was like 1.5-2s slower. wtf?

[Dee]

McLaren was struggling for over 2 years and 1 update made them the fastest team. One eureka moment and everything is different.

Calling it one eureka moment feels pretty false. McLaren was nowhere in 2022, started out nowhere in 2023 and ended up as consistent podium finishers by the end of 2023. They even got a few poles and won a sprint race in 2023 if I'm not mistaken.

Early 2024 was a small regression from McLaren, but they were absolutely on a consistent upwards trajectory all throughout 2023 and 2024. I would not say it was a single Eureka moment, but rather very consistent progress and a very solid understanding of the regulations. They have still not brought a single bad upgrade since late 2023.

Agreed. Mclaren has shown by far the most consistent upgrade path of any team in the last few years. I think their new wind tunnel is helping them massively. The cologne one they used previously is not fit for purpose anymore it seems.

In regards to the RBR, I will say race result is much better than I anticipated on Friday, kudos to the team. However mclaren is still easily ahead by a big margin. Their low to medium speed performance in on a different planet compared to everyone else and has been since miami last year, but I actually believe it will be even worse this year. Last year RB20 had one distinct advantage, it had the most outright downforce of any car on the grid, so at least in 200+ kmh corners the car was very competitive (and usually the fastest). This year mclaren has caught them in this area as well and they traded nothing in return, so low speed advantage comes into play harder still.
Next race in China with all those slow and long radius corners could move them even further ahead of RBR.

Lawson was absolutely terrible. When he was in clean air and on newer tyres than Max he was like 1.5-2s slower. wtf?

They changed the rear wing, beam wing on Lawsons car. Thats why he was starting from the back. I wonder if this unbalanced the car as it wasn't set up for this configuration initially..

[organic]

We need to find substantially more pace, but I am not totally without optimism. The TD is coming and maybe the advantage won't be unassailable by then

[Paa]

We need to find substantially more pace, but I am not totally without optimism. The TD is coming and maybe the advantage won't be unassailable by then

I kind of agree, but McLaren had like 0.7s advantage on the first stint. I don't think TD itself will be enough to recover that (assuming it will affect McLaren more). I would be surprised to see more than 1-2 tenths relative change due to TD.
Marko promised a substantial upgrade at race 3-5, but that needs to be in the range of 0.5s to have a fair fight.

[euv2]

We need to find substantially more pace, but I am not totally without optimism. The TD is coming and maybe the advantage won't be unassailable by then

I kind of agree, but McLaren had like 0.7s advantage on the first stint. I don't think TD itself will be enough to recover that (assuming it will affect McLaren more). I would be surprised to see more than 1-2 tenths relative change due to TD.
Marko promised a substantial upgrade at race 3-5, but that needs to be in the range of 0.5s to have a fair fight.

I don't think MCL have that much advantage in pure pace, they do not break away from the field lap 1 with 0.7 a lap. It comes late in the stint where others simply cannot hold onto their tyres. China should provide a clearer picture of their advantage, especially because I think it will be one of their best tracks with the long sweeping slow/med corners.

RB need another 0.3 in qualy pace, so that Verstappen can be in contention for pole every race. For the race they simply have to find a way to reduce tyre wear, maybe now that they have a look at MCLs wheel hub, they can hopefully understand their thermal management.

RB were probably waiting for preseason testing to confirm their correlation so they could green light further upgrades and confirm they're development path, if the updates are coming by race 3-5 it probably means they are confident in where they are going. Hopefully Helmut is right and they can be on pace with MCL soon.