Red Bull must beware of the rising papayas as F1 2024 takes a mid-season break

CHENNAI: With the new regulation change still two years away, every Formula One fan would have thought Red Bull and Max Verstappen would snatch away a couple of more titles and go miles ahead from the rest of the field. But after 13 rounds and still one more to go before the mid-season break, surprisingly, McLaren is catching up and causing trouble for Verstappen.

Even though Verstappen won seven races and sits comfortably on top of the driver’s standings, Lando Norris, with his win in Miami and eight podium finishes, moved to second place with 189 points. Yes, the gap to the Dutchmen is huge (76 points) for Norris. But the battle for the championship is far from over.

The 2023 F1 season saw the most one-sided campaign in the sport’s history, with Verstappen winning his third driver’s crown with an astounding record of crossing the line first in 19 out of the 22 races. And his constructor Red Bull won 21 of them.

13 races are over in the 2024 season, and we already saw seven different drivers win a race, representing four different teams.

Verstappen no longer the sole favourite for race wins

After winning two races in the season opener, Verstappen extended his record for a 10 continuous race win streak before Carlos Sainz from Ferrari broke it by winning in Australia, as the Dutchmen retired from the race due to a mechanical failure in his car.

Despite that, he bounced back strongly by winning back-to-back races with aplomb to extend his lead in the championship, and seemed like a repeat of 2023 and 2022. Well, at least until the Miami Grand Prix.

One of the crucial game changers that made the season completely turnaround was McLaren’s major upgrades to the McLaren MCL38 car in Miami. It gave Lando Norris his first-ever victory in F1.

The same happened to his teammate last weekend when Oscar Piastri won at the Hungarian Grand Prix and Norris came in second to give the papaya outfit constructor its first 1-2 finish since Italy 2021.

Though there were some harsh calls made by the McLaren strategy team that day to make Norris let Piastri to the lead of the race with more than 20 laps to go as he was the lead car throughout the race and after a slow second pit stop for Piastri, Norris undercut him and found himself ahead, in fact faster than the Australian in the second phase of the race. After some rough talks on the radio, Norris eventually complied, which gave Piastri his first victory.

Ironically, even back in the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, Norris was told to hold position and let his then Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo win the race. It must have been a deja vu moment for the British driver to let another one of his fellow Australian teammates win a race. But he can’t afford these anymore if he is eyeing the driver’s title.

Nonetheless, Mclaren bagged 43 points last weekend and crucially surpassed Ferrari in the constructor’s table to go second (58 points behind Red Bull).

Checo in Check: Will Red Bull hit the reset button on Perez?

A garage that has always had plenty of media attention throughout the season, however, for all bad reasons, was that of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, ‘Checo’ as everyone likes to call him.

The Mexican driver is having one of the most difficult seasons of his 13-year-long career in Formula One. In a season which featured seven different race winners, he (Perez) was not even in the frame of winning a single race. Forget winning, he didn’t manage to get out of Q1 in 5 out of the last 6 races in qualifying.

He is seventh in the driver’s standings with only four podium finishes in the season and three of them coming in the first three races where he finished behind Verstappen.

After his decent start ,earlier this year he signed a multi year contract with Red Bull securing him a seat till the end of 2025 season. But with things going the way they are, it looks like Red Bull need to rethink on the decision for its second seat and for what it's worth there is an exit clause in his contract which can see him lose his seat.

And there are plenty of drivers available in the Red Bull group who can sway the team to make a decision regarding Perez in the summer break.

With the team’s Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newy calling it quits with the team, drawing close to a 20-year partnership winning six titles, they need to have a stable driver line-up with new regulations also coming in. And the way it looks now, it is not looking good for Perez.

“We all want ‘Checo’ (Perez) to realise the potential that he showed in the first four or five races, and we know he’s capable of that and that’s why we took up the option early on him for next year to try and settle him,” said Chirstian Horner, team principal of Red Bull after the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“I think he’s been in a bit of a head-spin the last few races, but hopefully today showed signs that he’s coming out of that, " he added.