Red Bull suffered an internal fiasco – they will not be this bad again next year

Max Verstappen and Helmut Marko pose for a photograph after the Las Vegas Grand Prix
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the championship in spite of his machinery - Mark Thompson/Getty Images

There is little doubt that 2024 is Max Verstappen’s toughest championship victory yet. His first title, in 2021, was difficult for plenty of reasons, but in 2022 and 2023 the dominance of the Red Bull played a major part in his success. In those years the question was how many wins Verstappen could string together, but by the end of this year it was whether he would even win a race.

This time Verstappen had to work to win the championship – winning seven of the first 10 races but then only one in the next 12. It was not just about having the best car in the pit lane this season, Verstappen won the championship in spite of his machinery.

When the RB20 fell back, Verstappen kept his head – a few questionable skirmishes with Lando Norris aside – and stayed focused. When you have won 34 of 44 races across two seasons, settling for second or worse is not easy, but he should be satisfied that he made the difference in 2024. I also think he will be looking forward to next year.

In 2025 I expect the competition to be tough; McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull will all be up there. Mercedes, too, should be able to build a car that is as good as their high points in 2024. There are also several high-quality drivers in race-winning cars all around Verstappen.

Hamilton and Leclerc should pose biggest threat

At Ferrari, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will be ones to watch next year, with the team scoring more points than any other from Monza onwards. McLaren have a strong driver pairing and have been the most consistent team in the past six months. Norris, too, will have learnt a lot from his first championship-contending season and Oscar Piastri will likely improve in his third year in Formula One.

It is therefore unthinkable that Verstappen will be able to open up an 81-point lead after 11 rounds, as he did this year. However, he is up there with – and arguably ahead of – all of his rivals and will no doubt look at next year as an opportunity for a fifth title.

But should Verstappen be concerned about his hopes for next season? After all, he has been outscored by both Norris and Leclerc by 20 points in the past 10 rounds and has taken only four more than Piastri. Red Bull will, of course, do everything they can to put themselves into a winning position again, but I do not believe they will be as bad in 2025 as they were in the second half of 2024.

The team will have learnt an awful lot from this year and now they need to put that into practice. If you take 2024 as a whole, the internal politics and power struggle that blew up before the season even began would have affected them greatly. Whatever team you are, off-track strife like that is a mental distraction that detracts from what happens on track. That has seemingly been put to bed and they can now focus on developing their car into another race winner and championship winner.

I would be surprised if Verstappen does not line up in Australia next March as favourite for the title. It is clearly difficult to predict what Red Bull will do over the winter and whether Verstappen will be better than the rest, but he will certainly be in the mix, even if the car is not the outright fastest. When it is, he can dominate, and when it is not, he can still compete – that is what the last 12 rounds have shown us. Still, he will want to win the championship through winning races rather than just outscoring his rivals.

Where Red Bull can improve next season

Why did Red Bull fall back in 2024? Well, aside from the internal fiasco, the current ground-effect F1 cars are volatile when it comes to performance. The majority of downforce comes from the car’s under-floor and adding downforce in this area often creates instability in the car, which in turn means the drivers lose confidence and ultimately performance.

Mercedes and Ferrari are two good examples of teams whose performances have yo-yoed throughout the season. Red Bull were no different, with a particularly difficult period coming around the summer break, in which Verstappen scored just one podium in five grands prix. Certainly, losing technical director Adrian Newey earlier in the year would have been a blow because he has such a great understanding of how the ground-effect cars work and what a driver needs to go quickly.

If Red Bull have not learnt their lessons from 2024 I would be surprised. I would think they have got to the point where they understand their dip in form. They should be capable of correcting it for next year, even if they did not manage it completely in 2024, perhaps because of the cost cap. Still, they ground out the results. That is what F1 is all about – not just having a bad day, but knowing that you can get the best from the car on a bad day.