Red Bull, dominating season
It doesn't take a clinical eye to understand what the on-track values of a Formula 1 season could be. Net of exponential growth in progress, such as that recorded by McLaren (but anticipated by the words of team principal Andrea Stella), a rough hierarchy is also obtained at the end of the tests or at the first race.
In Bahrain, for example, Red Bull had already shown it had a much wider gap to 2022: not only was the RB19 a clear step forward compared to the previous car, but Ferrari had improved much less, while Mercedes had once again run into the problems of the zero pod philosophy. And while Charles Leclerc had a face that was all a program, Max Verstappen smiled toothily under his helmet at Sakhir. In Red Bull, as revealed by team principal Chris Horner, they were certainly happy to have achieved a double on a circuit that 12 months earlier had reserved them a double zero, but the litmus test on the speed of the RB19 would have been Melbourne, another circuit where the Milton Keynes team had suffered not only technical problems but also race pace problems compared to Ferrari. This is why Australia, for Horner, was one of the most important victories of 2023.
Horner's words
“Certainly, after Bahrain, we said to ourselves that we had a great package. However, we didn't know if it was a specificity of the circuit, for example temperature and asphalt“, this is his comment ad Autosport.
“Only after testing two or three circuits and after going to a couple of tracks that were more problematic for us in 2022 did we understand that the car was really strong. And this was the case in Melbourne. It takes a sample of a few races to have a clear overview: in Bahrain no one within our team he got carried away“.
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