2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[CHT]

FP3 is where we will see the potential for this weekend.
Not sure what is Lawson's program today, but he looks like he is struggling.
I am not writing off Yuki qualifying ahead of Lawson in RBR.

[DGP123]

I think its season over for us before it even started.

Sorry to say this but its game over.

Era’s come to an end. It happens, especially at the end of a regulation. It’s been a great run, but the signs have been there from the drop off in performance from last year. I’d be amazed if Max isn’t eyeing up Aston Martin for 26’ in some shape or form.

[CHT]

I think its season over for us before it even started.

Sorry to say this but its game over.

Era’s come to an end. It happens, especially at the end of a regulation. It’s been a great run, but the signs have been there from the drop off in performance from last year. I’d be amazed if Max isn’t eyeing up Aston Martin for 26’ in some shape or form.

AM is about 3 to 4 years from success. That how long AN took to build a team around him.

[Sergej]

I think Max can win a couple of races this year if they will be able to add more pace to the car (doubt but still), maybe some races in particular conditions, maybe even this Sunday if it rains....but nothing more. It'll be a no title fight season, but that's ok after the past 4 years. I can see Max's future out of Red Bull in a couple of years.

[CjC]

I’ve got a feeling Mario’s (A)/B/C/(D) system to rank drivers is going to stick

Verstappen is clearly an A
Bortoleto is a B
Doohan is a C
Lawson?
Tsunoda?
Hadjar?

[Juzh]

Car is trash, and lawson is overrated af, should never have gotten the drive. will be albon / gasly / perez all over. Looking at telemetry traces car is indeed simply slow nearly everywhere.

[f1isgood]

Looks like Red Bull hit the ceiling of their concept much sooner. That was a good run that lasted for nearly half a decade. Whatever happens, Max has managed to fulfil his potential in F1.

[Eren Jager]

At some point, you just have to say it: I'm just ashamed.

The car is nowhere in terms of performance, still weak in low speed corners, Max avoids the curbs like the plague, the same instability on corner entry and mid-corner, the same grip issues on street circuits. In short, the team told us they worked all winter to fix the RB20’s flaws, only for them to reappear—and on top of that, we managed to lose the only advantage of the RB20: its peak performance when in the right operating window.

Horner has completely wrecked the team. Losing Marshall, Newey, and Wheatley favoring Waché, who hasn’t shown anything good in two years. We were a dream team, and of course, all things come to an end, but not like this, not this way. You can't lose over a second to your rivals in a single year when you were the team that understood ground effect best, and your PU had no deficits. The season hasn’t even started yet, and it’s already over. Max, with his talent, might still grab a few podiums here and there, maybe even a miraculous win, but this is clearly the end of the cycle.

It hurts, and I just don’t get it. Why are we this bad? I watch the Mercedes onboards (I won’t even mention Ferrari or McLaren). I look at where they were a year ago, and I keep asking myself the same damn question: what the hell has the technical team been doing for the past year?

[Bill]

its not the first time redbull had a difficult friday so lets wait and see.Australia had never been the track to gauge peaking order of teams other than that Max think its asphalt related

[Henk_v]

I dont buy it. How many races have we seen RB f-up in free practice, only to "miraculously" find some speed end take pole. Even in early 24 we had exactly these discussions.

Max does not want to be the guy that pulls a sub par car over the line first. He wants to win as a team. He wants pressure on the team to improve. And rightly so.
"His guy" Newey left. The team had to convince him they can build a fast car and he should stay. Max is keeping them to that promise. You can bet your left arm his manager has Horner by the balls and makes him deliver.
And why would Max tolerate a mediocre RB. If he wants he can drive the next race in a mediocre green car for a 9 zero's paycheck.

[venkyhere]

Amidst all the doom & gloom (so what if they lost people and lost their way, isn't it normal ? dominance is always cyclic) in this thread, may be some 'data' will be a welcome change to look at :

Spent some time with long run data from F1-tempo, with one race pace lap each from the top four teams.
Made sure I selected laps where LEC was not stuck behind VER and where NOR was not stuck behind ANT.



Observations & inferences (could be totally wrong)

- McLaren and Redbull on lower wing settings than Ferrari and Mercedes, it looks like, they are the ones who have to lift the most through T5 & T9-T10
- McLaren seems to be more heavily laden with fuel than Ferrari
- Ferrari is masterful through T12, they can get to higher gear much earlier than others
- Redbull (Max) doing some weird things in slow corners, they are one gear lower than others :
a) either because the car is simply refusing to rotate in slow corners (3,11,13)
b) or because they want to 'hide-pace' by downshifting extra, thus delaying the speed buildup for the section after the corner.
(I think 'a' is the likely reason)
- Redbull (Max) sandbagging by refusing to upshift for pit straight and delaying upshift between T2 and T3 & delaying downshift for T9-T10 (which would've given better engine braking before and better traction after, the 'chicane')
- Ferrari and McLaren are delaying upshift (sandbagging) too, for the pit straight.
- Mercedes seems to be the 'relatively honest' team in terms of showing their hand.
- Mclaren are the kings of the high speed section (can't see evidence of any derating by others) that is sector2.
- Ferrari/Mercedes/Redbull are almost similar (w.r.t time consumed) through the sector2 high speed section ; though Redbull seems to struggle with T6 (which in turn means more time in pocket for sector2).

[Cs98]

Amidst all the doom & gloom (so what if they lost people and lost their way, isn't it normal ? dominance is always cyclic) in this thread, may be some 'data' will be a welcome change to look at :

Spent some time with long run data from F1-tempo, with one race pace lap each from the top four teams.
Made sure I selected laps where LEC was not stuck behind VER and where NOR was not stuck behind ANT.

https://i.imgur.com/KLY6Prd.png

Observations & inferences (could be totally wrong)

- McLaren and Redbull on lower wing settings than Ferrari and Mercedes, it looks like, they are the ones who have to lift the most through T5 & T9-T10
- McLaren seems to be more heavily laden with fuel than Ferrari
- Ferrari is masterful through T12, they can get to higher gear much earlier than others
- Redbull (Max) doing some weird things in slow corners, they are one gear lower than others :
a) either because the car is simply refusing to rotate in slow corners (3,11,13)
b) or because they want to 'hide-pace' by downshifting extra, thus delaying the speed buildup for the section after the corner.
(I think 'a' is the likely reason)
- Redbull (Max) sandbagging by refusing to upshift for pit straight and delaying upshift between T2 and T3 & delaying downshift for T9-T10 (which would've given better engine braking before and better traction after, the 'chicane')
- Ferrari and McLaren are delaying upshift (sandbagging) too, for the pit straight.
- Mercedes seems to be the 'relatively honest' team in terms of showing their hand.
- Mclaren are the kings of the high speed section (can't see evidence of any derating by others) that is sector2.
- Ferrari/Mercedes/Redbull are almost similar (w.r.t time consumed) through the sector2 high speed section ; though Redbull seems to struggle with T6 (which in turn means more time in pocket for sector2).

Too much distortion from engine modes. Leclerc is in race mode and also cooled down his tyres for half a lap (picked it up on the onboard), pretty sure Norris is in race mode + he has a tow, Russell has less deployment but similar engine mode to Norris, Verstappen has lower mode and less deployment on all but the first straight.

Here's compared to last year from two laps before.

[Paa]

I'll wait before drawing final conclusions, but it doesn't look good.

The main problem is that Red Bull have lost lot of key people in recent 2 years and I don't see any real intent to build the team back up. Even if they confident that they can fill the spaces internally, it would be still refreshing to grab some high-level men, just for trading in the know-how and a fresh eye.
Without a quick turnaround, Red Bull could indeed collapse which will be crowned by losing Max in a year or two.

[Cassius]

I agree there is too much distortion. On Lap 20 Max gains half a second by going into a similar race mode to Lawson. He did have DRS on this lap when a Williams appeared in front of him on the straight, buthe had to lower his speed in T1. This mode was similar to what Lawson was running most of his laps.

Also, 9/10 and 12 are tyre saving corners, so we don't know how conservative everyone was taking these.

Based on the long run telemetry it doesn't look that bad for Max (not saying he is in the mix though). They just need to improve short run performance. It is actually quite similar to the start of last year's Australian GP.

[organic]

The car has good balance and reasonable characteristics. It is just not quick enough. Can they add performance without reintroducing bad behaviour? We'll see