Unpaywalled: What's up with Red Bull Racing?
Who is this team and what have they done with Red Bull?
This was originally published in September 2024, and I’m re-releasing for free subscribers because it’s still relevant. Well, RBR aren’t currently going through a downturn, but the rumblings in the background keep popping into the foreground. So.. on with the show.
A brake failure. Strategy missteps. Engine problems. A car the team can't seem to get on top of. A pit stop in excess of 6 seconds. Who is this team, and what have they done with Red Bull Racing?
Much has been made of the political rumblings at the team this year, including by yours truly, but there’s a few things here I want to discuss. For sure, the infighting happening publicly between the team leadership and the top driver’s management isn’t a good look, or indicative of a healthy team, but I think that's the tip of the iceberg.
So far this season Max has had 6 non-podium finishes, as well as a retirement due to a mechanical failure. You know, that time when his rear right brake exploded in the pit lane all the way back in Melbourne. And it looks like there might be a few more off-podium finishes before the team get a handle on things. To put that in perspective, so far this season Max has had as many non-podium finishes than in the last two seasons combined! Not that I'm wishing for a return of Maximum Verstappen, but the line we keep hearing about four teams being able to win on any given day is working on performance of three teams and, mostly, reputation of the fourth.
With that, I will gladly grant that Checo Perez was denied a fantastic possible/likely podium at Baku by the collision with Carlos Sainz. It was a waste of a drive for both drivers, and I'll parrot how Jolyon Palmer described it: "both drivers just positioning their cars into each other."
But back to Red Bull Racing; what's going on?
The natural brain drain
There’s a constant flow of people between teams. It isn't unusual; for many of these people their whole industry is contained, or represented, within the few hundred metres of the pitlane. Promoting from within is often a preferable strategy, but not everyone is willing or able to wait until the opportunity comes. To give you an example: James Vowles was seen as the successor to Toto Wolff as team principal at Mercedes, but he moved to Williams to be team principal because there was an opportunity. How many years would James be waiting if he stayed at Mercedes?
Different teams also mean different challenges. Though I wouldn’t say that people get tired of winning, there is sometimes more thrill in the chase. In building a team up rather than working with a system that other people put together. Although, perhaps Adrian Newey did get bored and that's why he moved, but we can probably all agree he’s a special unicorn. Mercedes had a brain drain during their dominant era for similar reasons. Did it contribute to their fall in performance? I would say yes, but to a lesser extent than the massive change in aerodynamic regulations did.
So while this is for sure happening in the Red Bull Racing team (cue montage of Zak Brown and Toto Wolff winding up Christian Horner about this), the time scale on which we are seeing their downturn (perhaps downfall?) indicates to me this is either not the primary cause, or the numbers of staff leaving has become a problem and there are whispers that there's a higher than expected number of folks leaving.
The Adrian Newey effect is so strong that I can't include him in this section; I'll discuss him in a bit. There have been other senior staff leaving, as well as Newey, but they don't get the media fanfare of Newey.
When larger than expected numbers of staff leave over a period of time, it indicates underlying problems within the organisation. So let's move onto some possible reasons for things to not be so rosy behind the scenes.
The Complaint
By which I mean the complaint against Christian Horner that was made at the start of the year, which I've written about previously, is still lingering. No, we don’t know the details, and it isn’t our business to, but some things stand out to me. First, the fact that an internal investigation concluded in favour of Horner doesn’t mean he didn’t do anything. I don't mean to, or want to, start a fucking mob after the guy, but internal investigations have their own rule set to follow. Aside from big companies sometimes desperately wanting to preserve whatever good veneer they have and possibly stacking the deck against anyone threatening this, it can be hard to demonstrate enough proof in one v one cases. There might also be a tendency to lean in favour of the most senior figure because “no one else is having any problems,” or having, for instance, bullying and harassment dismissed as "just bad management." And if your only witness is the person you’re accusing it’s going to be tough.
I’m intentionally ignoring whatever is or isn’t said in the “leaked messages” because I haven’t sought them out. More broadly about the complaint, I don’t believe it was made in bad faith, by which I mean, I don’t believe the complaint is part of the flame war between Horner and Jos Verstappen. What I want to say is that if someone is at a point where a complaint about inappropriate behaviour is being made against the team principal they probably aren’t the only one. A culture within a team or work place can degrade slowly, but complaints of a significant nature are a sign of it.
And if I'm entirely wrong and the complaint was part of the flame war? Then the whole situation at the team is far worse than I've been giving it credit for, and it's amazing that they've lasted this long without spontaneously combusting in a dumpster somewhere.
Tensions
The flame war between Jos and Horner, with Helmut Marko chiming in with snarky remarks, is probably going to have ripple effects. I’m sure there’s a lot of people within the team who don’t give a shit and aren’t affected by it. But I’m also sure there’s a lot of people who do see it, and are affected by it. Furthermore, this has likely been going on far longer than we think. How much refereeing was Dietrich Mateschitz doing all this time? More importantly given the current situation RBR finds themselves in, how widespread is this animosity? This kind of thing could cause a devastating rift, as Jos Verstappen has often pointed out. A light example for instance, maybe your highly experienced colleague is suddenly not listened to as much because they’re on the other side of the rift to your head of section.
I get that the people who join Formula 1 teams are competitive. But, that this has gone on so long gives me the impression that the competitive streak isn’t well managed and/or contained at RBR. In my reasoning here I will cite a scene from the entirely fact based and not at all sensationalist documentary called Drive to Survive. At some point in season 1 (the 2018 sesason) the cameras are following Horner around his farm and he introduces his two donkeys: Max and Daniel. Horner follows up by saying that sometimes donkeys are easier to manage than racing drivers. I'm not saying that all the driver rivalry is 100% down the team principal to manage and resolve, but that sometimes some leadership is required to keep things from boiling over.
Having said that, Horner is for sure a fan of Max Verstappen; so many of Horner's scenes in Drive to Survive are simply odes to Max; how beautiful his driving is, how masterful he is at this, that, and the other. And this guy got into a fight with his star's dad and manager? An odd choice. Maybe political journalism is more appropriate approach when covering Red Bull than sport's journalism.
The asymmetric braking
The rumoured asymmetric braking, to be clear. By which I mean, the brake disc that broke at Melbourne. It was installed as per instructions but the instructions were wrong. Right? It was the right rear brake on a clockwise circuit. So, if they were running this system, that would have been the wheel benefiting from the extra braking. A few races later they drop off in pace and Checo entered his "poor performance” phase. If they were running such a system, it looks like the team had to jettison the idea after Newey had already stepped back. Maybe this is why Verstappen is complaining so much lately about the car not turning? Or maybe they never had such a system and its all been speculation. If there was something there we’ll probably find out in about 20 years through an oblique comment in a memoir or podcast.
But, lets go back to comment about the instructions being wrong for the brake assembly. If we take this at face value, that still isn’t a good sign for the team. That only one wheel on one car was affected gives me the impression that some mechanics knew and some didn’t. That some had to rely on the instructions. And apparently it wasn’t checked. Or it was checked but by someone else who was also out of the loop. This was unusual, and I'm referring to the story being discussed with the media, not that they aren't allowed mechanical failures. Okay, I guess they're allowed a failure every other season or so, I guess. (/sarcasm) What are they trying to say with this comment? A comment that we heard at least second hand, so there's already that. Maybe that things move so quickly they work with out of date instructions sometimes? That things are so rushed within the garage? Yea, everyone is capable of mistakes, and I'm not wanting them to keelhaul the person who did this by any means. It just seems to me an odd thing to say: "we were following our own instructions but they were wrong." Or, hang on, are they trying to do a funny? Moving on...
Adrian Newey
He's just one person, and one person doesn't make or break a team. It's become Christian Horner's tagline whenever he gets asked about Newey. And he is right about that. One person doesn't, or shouldn't, make or break a team. But if the team has been working around some major faultlines for a while and you become reliant on one person for the results, then, maybe that's enough to break it. To state the obvious, I've never worked with the guy, I don't know what his influence is in the wider team, how he talks with those around him, or what kind of perspective he provides and on what kind of level.
But he is just one guy. We can be reasonably confident, by which I mean 'very confident,' that the rest of the Red Bull Racing engineering team are not stupid. If they were, Newey would have quit a long time ago from having to do everyone's job for them. And they wouldn't have won anything, let alone just about everything for two years. So his absence is likely a factor, but unlikely to be the factor.
On the other hand, to negate my own argument, what if Horner is just dishing out another piece of misdirection? If the team are struggling after a key person leaves then the team was, or had become, over reliant on that one person. It comes back to the adage about not being irreplaceable because if you are then you can't be promoted. Except, Newey had nowhere to be promoted to and so perhaps the team had structured itself around Newey because he'd just always been there. Pretty much since the beginning of Red Bull Racing twenty years ago, and that's a long time. A freshly Newey-less team would be lacking confidence if he was kind of marking everyone's homework, so to speak. This is an extreme conclusion, I know, F1 is so cutthroat in competition a team needs everyone pulling their weight to succeed. But it has been sudden; he's leaving mid-contract. Perhaps proper contingency planning hadn't been carried out. Or, those that did know have left already.
Extrapolating with speculation
I doubt it's a simple reason Red Bull are struggling now. For a given value of struggling; they still manage the odd podium finish. I guess we’ll know eventually. Maybe in a few seasons time on Drive to Survive. So, on with the speculation...
Combining my earlier points into a cohesive storyline: Ongoing tensions within management since the passing of Dietrich Mateschitz have become faultlines. Without someone acting as a referee, certain loud members of the team now feel free to speak in public what they couldn't before, and as they feel they are being ignored within the team, they are speaking to the media more to get their point across.
The toxicity spreads down from management, tying up more areas and affecting more people. Naturally, more people become aware of what is happening on the various levels, private complaints become public, whispers start to get louder up and down the pit lane and suddenly staff are finding it more appealing to go work elsewhere, perhaps at a rate at which it becomes hard to replace and appropriately train staff. Then one of the pillars of your team announces he is leaving, and on top of that, the FIA advise the team to stop using that game changing piece of technology. The team are going through a down period on the race track, which compounds the frustration back at the factory, and so more staff leave.
What am I missing here? Let me know what you think.
One thing I know for sure is that they will be back.
Thanks for reading!
Take care of yourselves!