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The Red Bull RB-19 has been the class of the field in the first two races of the season in Bahrain and Jeddah, claiming the first two spots on the podium in both races. After a dominant 2022 campaign, many had expected teams like Ferrari and Mercedes to close the gap on the world champions.
However, Red Bull have managed to extend their advantage even further from their 2022 car and are in a prime position to run away with the season.
While speaking on The Race podcast, F1 pundit Mark Hughes mentioned the area in which the Austrian team holds an advantage over its rivals. He said:
"It's clearly aero efficiency in terms of how much downforce with how little drag you can carry, the Red Bull is just in a different league this year to any other car. It doesn't look ostensively all that different from last year's car but it's a lot faster and it's made big gains."
"Red Bull's starting from a championship-winning car in the first place. So I think it's all down to the fundamental underbody concept. It's not noticeably different from lots of cars from the upper body surfaces from what we can see but we can't see that does carry a lot of downforce for a lot of little drag."
"We need to make sure we are reliable without any issues" - Red Bull driver Max Verstappen
Despite his charging P2 finish from P15, double world champion Max Verstappen was not entirely pleased with his car's reliability issues. Speaking to F1.com, he said:
“But it's not only about the pace of the car, we need to make sure we are reliable without any issues. My first weekend [in Bahrain] was not very clean, because of just the big balance shift from testing to the race weekend, some other things which were going on in the background, and now again after three positive practice sessions of course, I have an issue in qualifying."
"Of course, I recovered to second, which is good, and in general, the whole feeling in the team, everyone is happy, but personally, I'm not happy because I'm not here to be second."
"Especially when you are also working very hard also back at the factory to make sure you arrive here in a good state, making sure everything is spot on, and then you have to do a recovery race – which I like, I mean I don't mind doing it – but when you are fighting for a championship and it looks like it's between two cars, we have to make sure the two cars are reliable.”
It would be tough for the rest of the grid to challenge Red Bull for a championship with such a dominant car in the 2023 season.
