Red Bull Racing’s dominance took a surprising hit in 2024, despite technical director Pierre Waché’s insistence that nothing changed with their car.
The numbers tell a different story. The team dropped a whopping 271 points compared to their record-breaking 2023 season.
That’s quite a fall from grace for a team that seemed unstoppable just a year ago. In 2023, Red Bull was practically unbeatable, winning 21 out of 22 races and wrapping up the constructors’ title with races to spare. Max Verstappen even sealed his third world championship during a Sprint race in Qatar.
2024 started strong enough. Verstappen grabbed wins in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China, though a brake issue in Australia gave them their first real headache of the season.
But everything changed in Miami.
McLaren suddenly found themselves with the fastest car on the grid, and Red Bull’s grip on the sport started slipping. While Waché maintains they didn’t change anything about their car, that might have been part of the problem.
Verstappen had been complaining about balance issues since the season began. Those early wins masked the problems, and his feedback apparently went unaddressed.
The numbers are pretty stark. Red Bull’s point total fell from 860 in 2023 to 589 in 2024.
To put that in perspective, Aston Martin had the second-biggest drop with 186 points – still far less than Red Bull’s decline.
Meanwhile, McLaren showed everyone how it’s done, jumping from 302 points in 2023 to an impressive 666 in 2024 – a gain of 364 points.
It seems Red Bull’s strategy of standing still while others developed their cars might have backfired. In Formula 1, if you’re not moving forward, you’re actually going backward.
