David Coulthard highlights two key issues in Red Bull ‘Everest’ verdict
Max Verstappen pulls into his Red Bull pit box
Losing the 2024 Constructors’ title to McLaren, David Coulthard believes it was only a matter of time before rivals caught Red Bull who had reached their “summit of Everest” the previous season.
Red Bull dominated F1 2023, the Milton Keynes squad winning 19 of 22 Grands Prix to claim the double while Max Verstappen secured a third successive Drivers’ title.
David Coulthard: When you are so close to the summit of Everest…
The team bagged their first-ever 1-2 in the Drivers’ Championship with Sergio Perez runner-up to Verstappen, signing off 2023 as Red Bull’s best season in Formula 1.
2024 looked set to follow suit with Verstappen winning four of the opening five races with Perez also on the podium in those same events. Red Bull were looking comfortable at the top of the standings.
However, as the season progressed McLaren came to the fore as they won the development war, every one of their in-season upgrades making the car faster. The same could not be said of Red Bull who notably made a misstep with their Hungarian GP floor which set them back.
That marked race three in Verstappen’s 10-race winless streak, his longest barren run since 2020, before he bounced back with a crushing victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix. Adding one more win to his tally, he finished the season on nine wins and 63 points up on Lando Norris.
It was his toughest title success since his wheel-to-wheel battle with Lewis Hamilton for the 2021 crown, the final season before F1 switched to ground-effect aerodynamic cars and Red Bull’s run truly kicked off.
But as with all good things, former Red Bull driver Coulthard says it could not last.
F1 2025 loading
👉F1 2025 driver line-up: Who is confirmed for the 2025 grid?
“I’ve been around long enough to know that just because you’ve won in the past doesn’t mean it will continue like that. It was such a dominant year last year [2023],” he told Motorsport-Total.com.
“When you are so close to the summit of Everest, it is simply very difficult to make innovations.”
However, fans – and rivals – should not forget that despite Red Bull’s balance issues, the RB20 still won more Grands Prix than any other car.
“There was clearly a path, a direction that they took with the car that still won ten Grand Prix (nine, ed), still more than any other,” the Scot said.
But, he continued: “Correlation is always the big thing. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t… If it were that simple, you would just give the rules to an AI tool.
“If it were that simple, everyone would just build the same car. But that’s just not the case.”
Red Bull’s correlation issues, the same problems that befell Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin in 2024, were not matched by McLaren who instead nailed their in-season upgrades.
Introducing a new floor in Miami, the Woking team stuck with that for much of the season and opted instead to find downforce and performance through other parts of the car.
Coulthard was impressed with their gains with the MCL38.
“It has always been in the ability of the top teams to deliver performance from one season to the next,” he said. “So well done, McLaren! What an amazing turnaround.
“Everyone talks about how it’s been 26 years since they last won the Constructors’ Championship, but someone reminded me that they did win it with Hamilton and Alonso, but were only banned retrospectively. I had forgotten that too. But even if we ignore that, it was a really long time ago.”
McLaren were P1 in 2007 but were excluded from the Constructors’ Championship as a result of Spygate, the espionage controversy in which McLaren personnel were found to have secret Ferrari technical documents.
Read next: Norris said ‘what we didn’t want to hear’ after Max Verstappen incident
