Zak Brown Pin Points Critical 'Million-Dollar Question'

Tuesday, 19 December 2023 at 15:00

Updated at Wednesday, 20 December 2023 at 08:24

McLaren's CEO Zak Brown outlined the most important question post-2023 season related to the Red Bull Racing team.

Red Bull started the 2023 season with a huge headstart on everybody else as the team made remarkable progress in terms of development.

While Red Bull's team principal stated the most significant improvement his team made to the car was to reduce the weight, it performed much better than any other car during the season's first race.

The first race of the season in Bahrain ended with the team from Milton Keynes destroying all its rivals and finishing 25 seconds ahead of the next fastest team.

Read also

Fastest F1 Drivers: Average Qualifying Positions In 2023

However, ever since the summer break, Red Bull pretty much stopped bringing upgrades to their car, and other teams like McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes started catching up towards the end of the season.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown identified the critical question to ask after the end of the season. During his interview with motorsport.com, he said:

"The million-dollar question that none of us know is how early did they [Red Bull] turn off this year’s car?"

If, in fact, Red Bull completely stopped the development of their car already in the summer and still won all but the race in the 2023 season, it can be quite worrying for its rivals. Brown added:

“We know we’ve outperformed the others in the development race, and we know we’ve closed the gap to Red Bull, but what none of us know is: did Red Bull stop, and we just caught up, or were they still developing?"

Red Bull's ongoing dominance is currently one of the biggest topics and it is a big question whether any other team will be able to close the gap to the team from Milton Keynes in the upcoming season.

But, if Red Bull had completely abandoned the RB19 development during the summer, Toto Wolff suggested the team could have an advantage of a couple of tenths.