CAN RED BULL MAKE A BETTER START?
Towards the end of 2017, Red Bull made it a three-way fight at the front. Max Verstappen took two wins on merit and the team left us with a feeling of ‘what might have been’. The first half of its season was compromised by an aerodynamic correlation issue, which meant that it really took until the summer break for the team to hit its stride and unlock the potential of the RB13. Those issues seemed to have been caused by the change in regulations, with the bigger tyres and cars giving some false information in the wind-tunnel, but
Red Bull should be over that now.
Personally, I don’t doubt that the Milton Keynes side of the team can hit the ground running in 2018. It still has the combined brain power of brilliant people like Adrian Newey, Rob Marshall and Paul Monaghan. Operationally it does a very good job at the track and is never afraid to make bold strategic calls, which often works out well for the team as a collective, even if it’s sometimes detrimental to one of the drivers on the day.
The most important thing for the team is that Renault is able to deliver a powerplant that’s a bit of a step forward in terms of performance, but crucially also a huge leap forward in terms of reliability. Last year there were too many weekends where Daniel Ricciardo and Verstappen were in contention for a good haul of points or a podium and the car broke down. When you combine that with the reliability woes that the Enstone squad and Toro Rosso had, it really showed that the engine people at Viry-chatillon needed to sort it out.
The power in the races wasn’t too bad, but to challenge for the title Renault needs to unlock more power in qualifying to allow Ricciardo and Verstappen to get track position and control the race from the front. If they can do that and sort out the reliability, then I’m confident that Red Bull will be up there.