Opinion: Alex Kalinauckas

Red Bull must follow up the tricky RB16 with a car capable of winning titles if it wants its star driver to remain immune to the charms of Mercedes

“Verstappen wants to win the world championship. And, right now, he can’t at Red Bull”

For lap after lap in the Eifel Grand Prix, it was the same story: the two Mercedes cars shot past Autosport’s media centre vantage point parallel to the pit straight, chased relentlessly by a single rival.

Of course, Valtteri Bottas’s off-track mistake and then Mgu-h-induced retirement ended the metronomic feeling to the opening phase of Formula 1’s most recent race, but Max Verstappen’s determined pursuit did not change. He hustled his Red Bull RB16 after Lewis Hamilton for the rest of the race, in a different pace league to the rest.

It has basically been the same story all year, save for the power issues that struck Verstappen twice in Italy, taking him out of an already unlikely title challenge, although it should be noted that his Monza weekend had been messy before his retirement.

Verstappen is consistently delivering great performances. In 2020 he is able to keep a watching brief on the actions of his rivals driving what may go down as one of F1’s greatest ever cars. The rest, including his team-mate Alex Albon, usually can’t even keep the Mercedes drivers in sight without race interruptions. This gives Red Bull a problem, although from a pretty good starting point.

Albon is surely underperforming given the mistakes he has logged this season, but he is not a slow driver. Far from it. Verstappen’s ability to deliver in what is clearly a difficult-todrive car is exaggerating the gap between the pair, but this is an example of Verstappen’s potential greatness.

He is taking a car that Red Bull now acknowledges has had an aerodynamic instability since its birth – as evidenced by the number of mid-corner spins both drivers had in testing, which continued throughout the early part of the season – and is still achieving the maximum results. The fact that Red Bull has been outqualified by teams behind it in the constructors’ championship on occasion (such as at the Hungaroring and Monza), and Albon has not been able to bank fourth place behind the regular 2020 frontrunners, suggests Verstappen may even be overdelivering.

It’s worth considering Verstappen’s performances in the context of this month’s news that Honda will be leaving F1 at the end of 2021. It has said it will continue to push, committing to introducing an all-new engine for next year, but this is still a blow to Red Bull’s ambition to finally topple Mercedes.

But the championship-challenging desire is of course a shared one. Verstappen knows how good he is. He immediately looked comfortable in the grand prix sphere when he arrived as a 17-yearold in 2015, and of course he has gone on to produce the results that will keep him at the pinnacle of motorsport for many years to come. Potentially, even long enough to challenge the overall victory tally Hamilton will surely extend in his remaining F1 years, should he get the machinery that leads to domination in the right hands…

He has developed into Red Bull’s undisputed team leader. This was encapsulated by his efforts to repay the team’s hard work in repairing his car on the grid in Hungary after his only major error of the season so far – that pre-race shunt in the wet.

But Verstappen wants to win the championship. And, right now, he can’t at Red Bull, with the same story surely set to be repeated in 2021 given the plans to carry over the current cars as part of the coronavirus cost-saving plans. Red Bull is improving the RB16, as evidenced by its upgrades to boost front-end performance at the Nurburgring, which Verstappen said meant“the car definitely improved”. Then there’s the move to cut F1 downforce levels by 10% for next year. But this is not taking place in isolation and the Mercedes W11 is already ahead by a clear margin.

So, naturally, Red Bull and Verstappen – who it must be said has not been critical of his team, despite another year passing since it was last a bona fide title contender in 2013 – will look to the delayed rules reset in 2022 as their chance. They must be given the benefit of the doubt that they can seize that opportunity, but they must stamp out the team’s tendency to start seasons on the back foot. That was a key aim for the current campaign, which was missed.

There have been suggestions – which you’ll be able to discover in our celebratory 70th anniversary bookazine, out next month – that Mercedes may have come into 2020 battling severe engine reliability problems had the season begun as expected in March, following issues in winter testing. In that case Red Bull might have been able to capitalise, although that’s predicated on it not having its own reliability concerns, as was the case in the eventual opener.

Red Bull needs to give Verstappen a world-beating car, and fast. By 2022, his contract will have just a year to go, which would give him considerable negotiating power, and it’s not so hard to imagine the team that once courted him as a rapidly rising star in European Formula 3 doing so again. That squad’s name? Mercedes.