Lando Norris isn’t Max Verstappen’s only worry at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. His own car is giving him headaches too.
Verstappen must get to grips with a car he’s dubbed a “monster” to fend off Norris and keep his Formula 1 crown, all while Red Bull’s long-running F1 dominance seems to be waning. Verstappen and Red Bull haven’t clinched a win in the last six races leading up to Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
McLaren will now favour Norris over teammate Oscar Piastri, but he’ll likely need Verstappen or Red Bull to slip up badly to close the Dutch driver’s 62-point lead in the final eight races of 2024.
The gap is much tighter in the constructor’s standings, with McLaren just eight points behind Red Bull, so the lead could change hands in Azerbaijan on Sunday.
New challengers to Red Bull are emerging, powered by Red Bull know-how.
Red Bull’s car design wizard Adrian Newey leaving for Aston Martin shows the long-term goals of a team backed by billionaire Lawrence Stroll. Dubbed “the team of the future” by driver Fernando Alonso, they’re eyeing a car design to exploit the new F1 rules in 2026 — just as Newey did for Red Bull in 2022. Aston Martin has even hinted they’d welcome signing Verstappen, who’s tied to Red Bull until 2028.
Another key member of Red Bull team boss Christian Horner’s crew, sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, is leaving at season’s end.
More pressingly, there’s little room to improve Red Bull’s once-dominant car. McLaren and Mercedes seem to have more stable, adaptable designs.
The car “was basically on rails and I could do whatever I wanted”, Verstappen gushed after winning the Chinese Grand Prix in April, his fourth win in five races to start the season. Each upgrade seems to have made the car less stable.
“We basically went from a very dominant car to an undriveable car in the space of, what, six to eight months?” he said in Italy.
The news that McLaren will “bias” towards Norris over his teammate Oscar Piastri from now on should boost Norris’ title bid. Racing under the team’s vaguely defined “papaya rules” — named for McLaren’s orange colour — at the Italian Grand Prix, Norris and Piastri started first and second but neither got the win which went to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. What “papaya rules” meant was never fully explained, beyond not crashing into each other, and the team’s “bias” is almost as mysterious.
