F1 News
Red Bull are "lost" and in "a position of desperation"
The decline of Red Bull Racing is one of the shocks of the 2024 season so far. After a record-breaking 2023 season which saw Max Verstappen win one of the most dominant world titles the sport has ever seen, problems behind the scenes and the departures of key staff members have seen a dramatic drop-off in performance, culminating in a disappointing Italian Grand Prix.
Verstappen could only manage to finish P6 at Monza last weekend after qualifying in seventh, while teammate Sergio Perez finished two places behind the Dutchman in P8, meaning their gap to McLaren in the constructors' title race shrank to just eight points. It's a huge swing after Verstappen dominated and won the first four out of five races this season, and ex-F1 mechanic Marc Priestley says Red Bull are now a team that are "lost"
Red Bull "at a point of desperation" after "poor" Monza weekend
Speaking on his YouTube channel after the Grand Prix weekend in Monza, the former McLaren mechanic started by saying: "The days of them dominating a Grand Prix are, pretty much, seemingly gone at the moment. Of course, things could change as they have done for many teams each weekend, but at the moment, Red Bull are lost, and they are struggling."
In 2023, Verstappen won all but three races out of the 22, with his teammate Sergio Perez winning two of them at the Saudi Arabian and Azerbaijan Grands Prix. It was a level of domination that has never been seen in the world of F1. But now, the new RB20 has become increasingly difficult to drive, and it resulted in the worst weekend of the season for Red Bull, with many mistakes occurring throughout.
Priestley continued by saying that he can see many more mistakes and underwhelming weekends continue for the Austrian team with eight races to go in 2024: "It was a really poor weekend from them on all fronts. They got so many things wrong, and it is typically the case that things happen when everything is not working right. when you're coming off a period when it has gone perfectly in the last couple of years, you tend to overthink things, you tend to overtry, and you try too hard to fix the problems. That comes from a position of desperation."
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