Verstappen Sheds Light On Winter Development Progress: 'It's Always An Unknown'

Friday, 05 January 2024 at 06:00

The reigning F1 World Champion, Max Verstappen, explained it is not as simple with the winter break development as people might think.

Red Bull Racing has been the most successful of all F1 teams in producing and further developing a car that satisfies 2022 and 2023 regulations.

George Russell recently called the RB19 statistically the most dominant car ever. And it is, as it allowed Red Bull to win 21 out of 22 races in the season, almost completing a clean sweep.

The team from Milton Keynes went into the winter break with a decent headstart over its rivals, and it is more expected from Red Bull to start this year's season in the lead.

However, Max Verstappen recently explained to auto-motor-und-sport.de that the teams and drivers themselves never know how big of a step forward they made until they can test their car on the track compared to others.

"It's always an unknown how much you actually improve over the winter. And how much the others."

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Red Bull seemingly didn't change too much on their car going from the 2022 season into 2023, and Christian Horner said the main difference could probably be attributed to weight loss on which they focused.

While they did what they could throughout the winter break, the triple World Champion suggested his team wasn't clear on how big of an improvement that would make at the first race in Bahrain.

"So we didn't know until Bahrain how good our car would actually be. With what we had done over the winter there was good hope that we would have a good car. The vehicle balance was right. This is always important to be able to be quick."

While it seemed like Red Bull had a perfect car in 2023, neither Adrian Newey nor Verstappen have been completely satisfied with it, and both see a lot of space for improvements.

On the other hand, the team is possibly in the same situation again where they are working on improvements, but whether or not they will work is going to be found out in Bahrain. Do you think Red Bull can keep their advantage over rivals?