![]() History shows that when a team gets ahead under a new set of rules, it can take a while for the rest to catch up (see Mercedes from the start of the V6 hybrid era in 2014). This was one of the big worries from those who felt the sanction against Red Bull breaking the spending limit in 2021 was too lenient: that the advantage could have been “baked in” early in a regulation cycle. Is Red Bull continuing to benefit from their cost cap violation? Does it work like compound interest - they got an advantage and then just built on that? I don’t doubt that they would still be dominant without going over, but I wonder if the punishment for this sort of thing needs to be more severe? Perhaps paying the amount over to each team and having that added to their cap? - Jeffrey K. But you could hear from their late debate over the fastest lap just how ready they are to contend for every last point. Jeddah was a rough weekend on the reliability front. It’s early days in the Verstappen/Pérez title fight, and I’d still back Verstappen as the heavy favorite. Hamilton’s retirement in Malaysia in 2016 basically decided the championship, as it meant after his win at Suzuka, Rosberg could afford to take P2 in the final four races and still win the title. If you DNF and lose 25 points to your rival, then it could take you four wins to make up that ground. They were pretty much set to finish 1-2 every single race, meaning the typical swing was seven points either way. Look at 2016, when Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton went head-to-head. One thing I was actually pondering on the plane over to Melbourne (g’day!) is just how critical reliability can be in two-driver title fights. Even in Bahrain, once he’d got back up to second, his pace was decent. He definitely seems more at ease with the RB19 car than the previous two Red Bulls he has driven. Right now, Pérez maintaining that over the course of the season seems like the greatest hope we have of a real title fight this year. When Max got up to second, I expected him to slowly eat the gap away, but Checo did brilliantly to keep it stable at five seconds for the second half of the race. I agree that Jeddah was probably the best example yet of Pérez going toe-to-toe with Verstappen. Greg out here again with the great questions. But surely Max is going to need a heavy dose of unreliability to make this interesting? Give me reasons to hope we can at least have a Rosberg/Hamilton battle in the absence of other teams - Greg S. Has Sergio really got it in him to fight Max over a season? It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him match Max for pace so consistently in the second half of the race, and the post-race demeanor of Max (and his father Jos!) certainly shows they are taking him seriously as a threat. But it’s worth keeping an eye out for this weekend on all the Red Bull and AlphaTauri cars. ![]() That means the team has plenty of samples on which to base a proper analysis, especially since the parts from Verstappen’s car also stayed in place. Pérez, however, got through the weekend without the same issue, as did both AlphaTauri cars, which use Red Bull driveshafts. But given the tight turnaround and the time it takes to get to Melbourne means that if a firmer solution is needed, it may not be in place until Azerbaijan, another month from now. Paul Monaghan, Red Bull’s chief engineer, said pre-race on Sunday they had put in a temporary fix for the problem, and would review that again for Australia. As Gianpiero Lambiase, Verstappen’s race engineer, told The Athletic back in February, Max has “an innate feeling for the connection between himself, the car and the road.” We hear that. It is why he was so quickly able to call out the driveshaft problem before it sidelined him in qualifying, and why he was so hot about it again when he heard a strange noise in the cockpit during the race. Verstappen is one of the most vocal drivers on the radio when it comes to picking up issues, like a downshift feeling or sounding odd. Just look at McLaren and Ferrari in Bahrain. The teams are still getting used to their new cars, learning their ins and outs. ![]() What do we think of Max’s driveshaft problem? Is this a bigger problem, and is it isolated given no issues at all for Pérez? - Philip D.Įxpecting any team to be bulletproof with their reliability at race two of the season is unrealistic. Naturally, you readers had lots of questions about what’s happening here - so many, in fact, we thought it best to put together a bespoke mailbag piece on the House of Horner. ![]()
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