Red Bull dominated Formula 1 this year, winning 21 out of the 22 main races. Some fear an even more dominant RB20, but in the third year of the current regulations, the Austrian team anticipates that there will be a convergence and smaller gains.
This scenario was anticipated by team boss Christian Horner in an interview with PlanetF1.com: ‘We have stable regulations. And so, of course, you start to reach the top of the curve where the gains you make are increasingly small. I think it’s an evolution, not a revolution. Now we are reducing the returns. But there are two more years of these regulations. It is inevitable that the field will converge’.
With wind tunnel time restricted not only by results but also by penalties due to the breach of the 2021 budget cap, Red Bull found itself limited in development for 2024. However, Horner emphasized that it was possible to transfer the focus early: ‘It’s always difficult to say, but the wind tunnel didn’t help for next year. Fortunately, we had a competitive car this year, so we were able to transfer a lot of the focus reasonably early to next year’s car’.
