Why it cannot be a surprise to anyone that Red Bull are dominating

Max Verstappen immediately impressed with his RB20 in Bahrain. Still, it cannot be a surprise to anyone that Red Bull are in such good shape. Rather, the question was how far behind Verstappen the competition is, not if.

They were not yet the qualifying times of last year's Bahrain Grand Prix, but the ease with which Verstappen drove fast laps during the first day in the RB20 was stunning. The Dutchman was able to drive lap after lap and was by far the fastest of the day. On Thursday and Friday, Sergio Perez and Verstappen did not drive the fastest lap, but neither were they focused on it at all.

Why Red Bull Racing were the favourites beforehand

It is not surprising, as Red Bull Racing made a good step forward from 2022. Where the competition ran up against a ceiling with a different concept, Red Bull's concept proved to work extremely well. From a world title in 2022, where there was still some rivalry with Ferrari, Red Bull was ultra-dominant in 2023.

Because with the RB19 the team had a car with which they would win both titles anyway, Red Bull chose very early on to shift its focus to 2024. Red Bull carried out the last update in Singapore, but well before that most of the technical team's time was already spent in the RB20.

This allowed Red Bull to present an "aggressive evolution" of the RB19 in Milton Keynes. Adrian Newey and Pierre Waché had had more time to work on the new car and thus came up with more new ideas. While the competition mainly tried to close the gap to the RB19 over the winter, Red Bull were already making a big step forward with the RB20 by the middle of last year.

Of course, a team can always run into trouble and updates can also not work out well, but Red Bull has already got the concept right since 2022. So the chances of it suddenly getting it finely wrong for 2024 were extremely small, especially considering it will already have tested many of these things on track in 2023.

The situation at Red Bull itself was reason enough to assume it would get off to a good start again in 2024, the situations at their rivals also made that possible more so.

Why Mercedes and Ferrari are behind Red Bull Racing

Take Mercedes, last year's number two, for example. While the Germans managed to keep Toto Wolff and James Alisson at the team for longer, ensuring continuity, that duo failed to recognise in 2022 that they had gone down the wrong path technically. The team got stuck to their own philosophy, which Wolff would later label a huge mistake. In 2023, with Alisson as technical director, another direction was taken, but Brazil showed that the team still lacked top concept. Indeed, where they thought their car would be very competitive, once theye wre on the track, it went finely wrong. Not a good signal when at the same stage you are working on next year's car with the same resources.

The number three Ferrari had a better ending to 2023 in that respect. Since Zandvoort, Frederic Vasseur 's team found something that allowed them to take a good step forward. But Ferrari will start again in 2024. Indeed, the Italians also had to say goodbye to their own concept and had to understand that the new concept will take time. Besides that, the technical team are still incomplete.

McLaren are the biggest challengers to Red Bull Racing

In this respect, McLaren and Aston Martin are even ahead. McLaren already switched to the 'Red Bull concept' before the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix. As a result, the team has already had six months to learn about this concept and can now use it in their car for 2024. However, they are far behind Red Bull, and the budget cap and restrictions on wind tunnel and CFD time mean that even big teams cannot continue to innovate to their heart's content. Another factor is that McLaren continued to work on the car throughout 2023. That car got better and better as a result, but during that time and with that money, Red Bull worked on the RB20.

With all the investment in 2023, McLaren certainly got closer to the RB19, but they were still not faster on a constant basis. So the fact that Red Bull are still ahead is no surprise. Moreover, McLaren's full technical team were also only be completed in January with the arrival of Rob Marshall and David Sanchez.

Aston Martin has had the Red Bull concept since 2023 and has had a whole year to learn. Yet, a mega step cannot be expected from that team either. Indeed, in 2023, they chose a completely wrong route for development. The team didn't get better, but sank deeper and deeper. A tell-tale sign that they didn't quite understand the car yet, or the correlation between wind tunnel and track isn't right. In either case, that is not a good signal for the 2024 car.

With all this in mind, it was clear beforehand that Red Bull would fly out of the starting blocks and Verstappen seems to be on his way to claim a fourth world title. It will never be easy, but it is certainly not surprising that Verstappen was so fast.