Red Bull Strategy
Red Bull Strategy
Red Bull looked like a vulnerable dear in headlights when the 2022 season started and it looked like Ferrari would be the team to win it all this season as Red Bull had DNFed 2 of the first 3 races of the season. But we’re now at the midway point of the season and the boys in blue may have just solidified their win on both the constructors’ and drivers’ championship with a stunning come-from-behind win from Max Verstappen.
So what has been the x-factor for Red Bull this season especially in Hungary? And how are the title favorites feeling this deep into the season? Well let’s talk about it then. But before we do, consider subscribing so you don’t miss out on our latest uploads. Now that’s out of the way, let’s get started.
It is safe to say that there are 4 key ingredients for a team to find success in F1. 1st would be the financial capacity to make moves and decisions that are not stifled by financial insufficiency. 2nd would be hiring competent and out-of-the-box thinking engineers that will create a car better than anyone on the grid. 3rd would be a driver who has the capabilities and instincts to extract every ounce of pace out of the car. And 4th arguably the most important one is a team of strategists that will give its drivers the best chance to win races week in and week out.
And this past weekend proved that having the best finances, the best car, and the best driver is not enough without a team of competent strategists that will make the right call at the right time. I’m looking at you Ferrari. But in all seriousness, contrary to Ferrari’s poor execution this past weekend, Red Bull would be the complete opposite checking every box on the list this past weekend showing their team’s prowess from top to bottom with a masterful execution of their strategy that led to Max Verstappen roaring back from P10 to winning the race.
So who is the mastermind behind this stunning comeback from Max? Well, Red Bull fans should thank the team’s principal strategy engineer Hannah Schmitz who would recently give insight into how the team gave Max Verstappen the best chance of making a comeback through the field. Schmitz would say on the “Any Driven Monday Show” that the team actually had a totally different plan ready before the start of the race in Hungary.
“So, because we were starting out of position, one of the maybe more classic strategies to do is to start on the harder tyre and go much longer particularly with overtaking being much difficult in Hungary – so that was our plan,” Schmitz revealed. But we had also actually talked a lot pre-race about if the conditions are a bit damp and very cool as they might have been, that we could consider the soft tyre as the alternative because that might be better in those conditions and the laps to the grid both drivers were very vocal about having hardly any grip even though they were already on the soft tyre. The race engineers were like ‘we don’t think the hards are a good idea’, we all had a long discussion about it with Christian as well and decided to change to the soft tyres. There was a little bit of rain in the air as well so really that was better the tyre for that condition. Our concern was whether we could make enough progress in that first stint to make it worth it but obviously both drivers made great progress, so it really was.”
This win for Red Bull would be their 9th of the season with 8 of those brought by Max Verstappen which to Schmitz and the team did not think was possible before the lights went out in Budapest. In her words:
“Actually, it was one of the best [wins] of the season,” she said. “Just because I think starting P10 in Hungary was not something that we were expecting at all. I was thinking maybe we might just get on the podium, P3, P4 was kind of the best thing that was coming out of the simulations. “So, it was extremely exciting. It wasn’t really until the end of the race that I thought ‘whoa we actually could win this!’ So, it felt all the sweeter from where we started.”
Verstappen on the other hand would also give praise to Schmitz saying:
“It’s incredibly important if you want to fight for a Championship. You know, you can’t afford many mistakes. It’s of course, very hard, to always be on the good side, let’s say it like that. But we have a lot of good guys in the team, and girls. I think Hannah [Schmitz], our strategist, was insanely calm. Yeah, she’s very good.”
Now asides from having great minds in their strategy department, Red Bull has always been known to have the brightest engineering minds in all of F1 with the likes of Adrian Newey and Paul Monaghan spearheading their engineering department. But what many do not know is that Red Bull has been slowly poaching Mercedes’ engineers as well as it has been reported that over this past summer, some of Mercedes’s brightest engineers jump shipped to the Milton Keynes team and recent reports have shown that Red Bull isn’t stopping there as the team has recently coaxed Mercedes Chief Engineer Phil Prew.
Now his name may not be mentioned as much by the media but Prew has worked for many years on different teams in his career. Prew had worked with Red Bull’s current Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey at McLaren. And from 1997 – 2016, Prew would serve as a race engineer to David Coulthard, Lewis Hamilton, and Sergio Perez just to name a few, before being moved to the Mercedes Engine department as Chief Engineer.
With all of this going for them, and their ginormous lead in both championships. Many would expect Red Bull driver and drivers’ championship title leader Max Verstappen to be excited over his title chances. But the Dutch drive would be the complete opposite saying in a recent interview:
Of course, it’s a great lead. But we cannot have too many days like we had [on Saturday]. And even [in the race] we had a few little issues with the clutch and the upshifts, which was not great to drive. Overall, of course, it’s good, but we just keep on working, keep on trying to improve things.
Red Bull’s Team Boss Christian Horner would also agree to Max’s statements saying:
The points tables look healthy, and it’s a great way to sign off into the summer break,” Horner added. “But there is still a lot of racing to go. Ferrari are quick, Mercedes are coming back into the game. There’s still a long, long way to go in this championship, plus a sprint race. So we don’t take anything for granted. There’s still a lot of racing to do and they’re at very different venues.”
And as mentioned earlier, Max has contributed 8 of the 9 wins for the team which makes Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher’s record of achieving 13 races wins in a single season within Max’s reach. Max would be asked if he has given thought on the possibility of breaking these records to which he would reply with:
I don’t know, we’ll of course try to win as many as we can in the remaining races we have,” said Verstappen. But of course, more importantly, we have to keep the lead in the championship. That’s, of course, what we have to try and secure.”
And while Red Bull and Verstappen have a commanding lead over their supposed-to-be rivals Ferrari this season, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc isn’t shutting the door on the possibility of a final battle at the last race of the season saying and predicts that it will be an intense battle between them once the season starts:
It depends on the situation, on the person you’re facing, your opponent,” he explained when asked how fiery their battles could become. “How far is he willing to go? This year, either I had a big advantage in the championship and then you are not really willing to take those risks. Or he had a big advantage in the championship and he is not really willing to risk. Or I am not really willing to risk because I need to catch up points. So, I feel like the championship of last year was probably much more prone to see these type of things because it was so close until the very end. would have expected us to be much more like this if the championship will be extremely close towards the end. [If] it’s not finished, then we might see that at the end of the year.”
And there you have it guys, so what do you think? Is this a start of a long reign for Red Bull especially now that Mercedes has fallen off from what they were? And will Charles be able to bring himself back into the fight with Max? Let us know in the comment section below and as always, don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t!
