Lando Norris is only one of Max Verstappen’s problems at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The other is his own car.
Verstappen needs to tame a car he’s called a “monster” to hold off Norris and defend his Formula 1 title, all the while the Red Bull team’s years of dominance in Formula 1 seem to be nearing their end. Verstappen and Red Bull haven’t won any of the last six races going into the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday.
Norris will now be favoured by McLaren over teammate Oscar Piastri but will likely need some big slip-ups from Verstappen or Red Bull to overhaul the Dutch driver’s 62-point lead in the last eight races of 2024,
The target is much closer in the constructor’s standings, with McLaren just eight points behind Red Bull, so that lead could change hands in Azerbaijan on Sunday.
New rivals to Red Bull are emerging, powered by Red Bull expertise.
The departure of Red Bull’s car design guru Adrian Newey to Aston Martin is a sign of the long-term ambition of a team backed by billionaire Lawrence Stroll.
Dubbed “the team of the future” by driver Fernando Alonso, they have an eye on designing a car to exploit the new F1 regulations in 2026 — just like Newey did for Red Bull in 2022. Aston Martin has even signalled it would be open to signing Verstappen, who has a Red Bull contract through 2028.
Another key lieutenant to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, is leaving at the end of the season.
More immediately, there simply isn’t much 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”, enthused Verstappen after winning the Chinese Grand Prix in April, his fourth in five races at the start of 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 confirmation that McLaren will have a “bias” toward Norris over his teammate Oscar Piastri from now on should boost Norris’ title challenge.
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, other than not
crashing into one another, and the team’s “bias” is almost as mysterious.
