2024 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, Feb 29 - Mar 02

[organic]

Did I miss the news where they didn't allow RBR to develop?

As I said other teams got more development time

No, they have less development time, RBR starts developing the new car halfway in the season while every other team is busy fighting one another. Ferrari improved massively YoY, but I've been saying since well early in testing that RBR is going to win every single year until at least 2026. It's not possible to catch up this gap unless RBR makes a crazy mistake, which is hard when they have all of that time to work on the new car.

And this was no different - in fact worse - without the budget cap, which is what the discussion began with if you wish to check my initial reply

[chrisc90]

No idea why people are complaining already. RB come with a different concept (and still leading the way), it'll be ominous come their upgrade in Japan

Hardly a new concept, I think that’s overstating it. Just an extremely refined concept from previous

Maybe new concept is a strong phrase to use, but its certainly beyond a minor evolution. And this car is just the base for the upcoming upgrades. Even Adrain stated they need to bring big change to stop the others catching up.

[zubster]

Man this is rather depressing. Fair play to red bull but jeez even during the merc years it wasn't this dominant. I know this sport goes from one dominant period to another but surely this has to be the most dominant one ever.

[AR3-GP]

No idea why people are complaining already. RB come with a different concept (and still leading the way), it'll be ominous come their upgrade in Japan

Hardly a new concept, I think that’s overstating it. Just an extremely refined concept from previous

If you ask leading figures in the paddock like James Allison and Andrea Stella (in addition to RB), it is a new concept.

[morefirejules08]

No idea why people are complaining already. RB come with a different concept (and still leading the way), it'll be ominous come their upgrade in Japan

Hardly a new concept, I think that’s overstating it. Just an extremely refined concept from previous

Maybe new concept is a strong phrase to use, but its certainly beyond a minor evolution. And this car is just the base for the upcoming upgrades. Even Adrain stated they need to bring big change to stop the others catching up.

On today’s performance it’s pretty clear they don’t

[dialtone]

As I said other teams got more development time

No, they have less development time, RBR starts developing the new car halfway in the season while every other team is busy fighting one another. Ferrari improved massively YoY, but I've been saying since well early in testing that RBR is going to win every single year until at least 2026. It's not possible to catch up this gap unless RBR makes a crazy mistake, which is hard when they have all of that time to work on the new car.

And this was no different - in fact worse - without the budget cap, which is what the discussion began with if you wish to check my initial reply

That's really not entirely true. The 2014-2020 Merc dominance was already going on engine freeze period. The last period of consistent winning from a team without cost caps was really the Vettel RB era, and that was a LOT closer racing than we saw since the 2014+ engine freeze rules and now this new budget cap era. Early 2000s Ferrari was also much closer racing after a couple of years, like 2003. After 2004 dominance they killed Ferrari for 2005.

What we are seeing the last 10 years is not really the same as the old way.

[Apexseal157]

If it continues like this I'd be tempted by the evil that is succsess ballast. DRS already makes it artifical so at this point i just want to see close, unpredictable racing again

[Mansell89]

Is the budget cap actually just locking in the pecking order? No chance to test, upgrades limited, free practice shortened.

Another utterly garbage race at a soulless track.

Good luck to Sky and Netflix in pushing this same tale for another year.

F1 couldn’t pick a worse time to have this level of dominance.

[balex]

I expect Verstappen will probably ask RB for some flexi-working so he can WFH a couple of races, get that work-life balance just right.

[Mogster]

If it continues like this I'd be tempted by the evil that is succsess ballast. DRS already makes it artifical so at this point i just want to see close, unpredictable racing again

That’s my concern. This sort of dominance will lead to BoP.

Maybe there’s more that can be done around restricting development resources. The budget cap doesn’t really seem to be working.

[f1isgood]

I think people are blaming the budget cap without a good premise. The bigger issue is no seem seems to understand how to extract the same pace in race trim as Red Bull does. It is an unknown mystery. Whether it suspension, aero, a combination of both, or engine or whatever, we have had 3 versions of these new cars right now and RB simply understands the tires for race trim well.

Without a cap, I only see RB extending their advantage further as other teams lack the same level of understanding in my view. McLaren with two upgrades were almost as fast as RB in quali trim but on Sundays are simply not a match.

[chrisc90]

Is the budget cap actually just locking in the pecking order? No chance to test, upgrades limited, free practice shortened.

Another utterly garbage race at a soulless track.

Good luck to Sky and Netflix in pushing this same tale for another year.

F1 couldn’t pick a worse time to have this level of dominance.

All the same budget, so it effectively caps your big teams that were spending 4-5x as much as the lower teams on the grid. Adding to the wind tunnel allocation, (and RB's penalty last year) then it probably does even it out pretty well. Big question is.... Whether the lower teams are really capped by budget or not.

I expect Verstappen will probably ask RB for some flexi-working so he can WFH a couple of races, get that work-life balance just right.

Completely OT, but I seen a stat other day on social media that even after the summer break ( and you excluded Max and re-distributed the points to remove Max) so 25pts for P2 onwards, Max would have still won by 1 point.

Apologies mods for the Off topic.

[Zynerji]

I thought the race was good. 2025 cars are going to be 0.1s on convergence.

They should just freeze the aero then, and just switch the engine regs to v10 synth fuels for 2026..

[vorticism]

[AMG.Tzan]

No, they have less development time, RBR starts developing the new car halfway in the season while every other team is busy fighting one another. Ferrari improved massively YoY, but I've been saying since well early in testing that RBR is going to win every single year until at least 2026. It's not possible to catch up this gap unless RBR makes a crazy mistake, which is hard when they have all of that time to work on the new car.

And this was no different - in fact worse - without the budget cap, which is what the discussion began with if you wish to check my initial reply

That's really not entirely true. The 2014-2020 Merc dominance was already going on engine freeze period. The last period of consistent winning from a team without cost caps was really the Vettel RB era, and that was a LOT closer racing than we saw since the 2014+ engine freeze rules and now this new budget cap era. Early 2000s Ferrari was also much closer racing after a couple of years, like 2003. After 2004 dominance they killed Ferrari for 2005.

What we are seeing the last 10 years is not really the same as the old way.

Not really!

2014-2016 the championship goes down to the last race of the season 2 times and ends just 3 races from the end in 2015!

2017-2018 Ferrari shows up with a faster car yet Hamilton bleaches them!

2019-2020 were dominant seasons by Mercedes yet we got a ton of Mercedes vs Ferrari battles all through 2019 and some Red Bull battles at the end!
2020 ended up like that because of COVID but it was half a season with multiple new exciting circuits like Mugello and some new winners (Gasly, Perez)

2021 we got the greatest duel ever

So I wouldn’t say 2014-2021 were boring! 2011 and 2013 were far more boring…