Will Red Bull and Verstappen remain dominant through 2028? 'Would surprise me'
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General
- Toby McLuskie
Red Bull Racing won the two world championships by a huge margin last year, and this season it will grab the two titles with a possibly even bigger lead. The Austrian racing stable has yet to lose a Grand Prix in 2023, but Mika Hakkinen reassures the neutral F1 enthusiast: this dominance is not going to continue for another five years.
The two-time world champion reveals to Motorsport.com that he expects other teams to return to the front in the future. According to Hakkinen, this is partly because Formula 1 works with an aero-handicap system. The lower you finish in the constructors' championship, the more wind tunnel time you get. This should level out the teams' performance.
Will Red Bull remain dominant until 2028, when Max Verstapppen's contract expires? Hakkinen thinks not. "We know that the wind tunnel is an incredibly important element in making the cars faster. The teams with the best technology, who develop their cars in the wind tunnel and have a good understanding of the data, will be the future winners. Red Bull is winning at the moment, but I would genuinely be surprised if this continues for a very long time."
Red Bull and the wind tunnel
Red Bull also has the disadvantage that they are still contending with a 10 per cent cut in wind tunnel time due to exceeding the budget cap in 2021. The Milton Keynes-based team received that penalty in October and must make up for it in 12 months, so only after that will Red Bull be able to use the wind tunnel again at 'full capacity'.
However, as the leader in the World Championship standings, Red Bull will be the team with the least available wind tunnel hours anyway. So, for the team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, it is and will remain efficient use of the available hours in the wind tunnel.