Red Bull Racing has won its sixth constructors championship, embedding itself deeper into the history books as one of Formula 1’s all-time great teams.
Its sextet of titles puts it one short of the iconic Lotus squad of the 1960s and 70s. With two seasons still to run under this set of technical regulations, Mercedes and McLaren’s tallies of eight titles apiece are within reach before rules changes threaten to shake up the order.
Only Williams (nine) and Ferrari (16) are further ahead among championship-winning constructors.
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“To achieve this sixth constructors championship is beyond our wildest dreams,” team principal Christian Horner said. “Coming into the season, I don’t think we could have dreamt of having a season like this. It’s unbelievable.
“Last year was a very strong year for us, but to have kept that momentum rolling with the challenges we have had is testimony to all the men and women of the team that have worked tirelessly to have produced a car as competitive as we have had and that Max has made such good use of.”
Red Bull Racing is also sure to collect its seventh drivers championship this season, with Max Verstappen likely to claim the individual title at the next race in Qatar.
Only Sergio Pérez is in mathematical contention after the Japanese Grand Prix, but the Mexican is a whopping 177 points adrift of his teammate.
Verstappen will win the title at Qatar’s sprint race on Saturday if he prevents Pérez from outscoring him by six points or more — as good as a certainty this season.
“Max is absolutely at the top of the game,” Horner said. “He’s the best driver in F1 at this point in time.
“Everything has to come together — car, driver, team — in total harmony. He has this inner hunger and determination and huge ability, but he channels it and he does not get distracted by some of the trappings of F1.
“He’s an out-and-out racer.”
Verstappen has been so dominant this season that his tally of 400 points would be enough to lead Mercedes in the constructors championship by 95 points all on his own. It would be the largest gap between any two constructors in the championship.
“It’s the combination of the two drivers’ points that has provided the amount of victories that we’ve had across the season — 13 with Max, two with Checo — to achieve the sixth constructors championship,” Horner said.
Red Bull Racing is currently tied with Lotus on six drivers titles; its seventh will put it equal with Williams in fourth on the leaderboard behind Mercedes (nine), McLaren (12) and Ferrari (15).
The team is equal fifth with Lotus for combined constructor-driver titles, but Verstappen’s triumph will earn it that position outright behind Williams (16), Mercedes (17), McLaren (20) and Ferrari (31).
Verstappen’s RB19 was powered over the line at the Japanese Grand Prix at the Honda-owned Suzuka Circuit by a Honda-manufactured power unit.
It’s the eighth constructors championship powered by a Honda motor — notwithstanding the Red Bull branding on the block this and last year — putting the Japanese marque behind only Ford and Mercedes (10), Renault (12) and Ferrari (16) as the sport’s most successful engine builders.
Remarkably, this year’s Japanese Grand Prix fell on the exact date Soichiro Honda incorporated the Honda Motor company 75 years ago, on 24 September 1948.
“They’ve been a phenomenal technical partner for us,” Horner said. “They’ve produced a great engine and they’ve been an important element of our success with the performance and reliability that they’ve demonstrated this year, so it’s very fitting that we won the constructors championship here on Honda’s home ground.”
Red Bull Racing’s 2023 campaign has been one of the most dominant in Formula 1 history, with 15 of 16 grands prix won so far, giving the team a 93.75 per cent hit rate, equal to McLaren’s 1988 season, the most successful in history.
If the team were to make it to the end of the season without dropping another race, it would attain a success percentage of 95.45 per cent, the greatest of all time.
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No team has ever won the constructors championship with six races to spare. The previous record of five was jointly held by McLaren in 1998 and Ferrari in 2004 — albeit both seasons were markedly shorter than this year’s 22-round campaign.
“Unbelievable,” Horner said when asked to sum up the season so far in one word. “Formula 1 is one of the biggest team sports in the world, and it’s a result of all the 22 different departments, all the support functions, all of the backroom staff that have worked crazy hours, made sacrifices to produce these types of cars and this kind of result.
“Everybody is invested in one thing, and that’s the car. To produce the kind of car we have and achieve these kinds of results is an incredible performance.”
Perhaps more impressive than the raw success is the way Red Bull Racing’s grip on the championship hasn’t slackened as the year has dragged on despite several factors suggesting closer racing would be on the cards as the campaign wound down.
For one, RBR is hamstrung this season by a reduction to its development allowance after being found to have breached the cost cap during the 2021 season, the first year of operation of the financial regulations.
The team was found guilty of the overspend late last year and has been dealing with a 10 per cent reduction in wind tunnel time ever since, with the punishment due to expire next month.
In effect that’s allowed the next-best team in the championship approximately 20 per cent more development time. The third and fourth-best teams have been able to develop at 126 per cent and 134 per cent of Red Bull Racing’s capacity.
Despite this handicap, none has come close to laying a glove on the RB19, the unusual circumstances of Singapore excepted.
“The field has been moving around behind us — one week it’s McLaren, the next week it’s Ferrari, the next week it’s Mercedes — and we’ve been 90 per cent consistent at the front of the field,” Horner said, which he turned into a broader point about the relative efficiency of development.
“We’ve been fairly limited in the amount of development that we’ve done on the car, but I think the development that we’ve done has been effective enough to maintain a reasonable margin that we’ve seen again here today.”
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The team’s crowning achievement this year followed a solitary off weekend in Singapore. While defeat had no material effect on the championship standings or even the team’s prestige despite losing the chance to claim F1’s perfect season, Horner said it had been an energising experience that had contributed to the scale of domination in Japan.
“I think sometimes the races you lose are the weekends you learn the most at,” he said. “I think it was a big reminder to everybody that it is very easy to miss the target.
“We all left Singapore knowing that ultimately the winning run that we had would come to an end but a little frustrated.
“I played paddle tennis with Max on Wednesday and he was properly fired up. He made it clear and said that he wanted to win the race by 20 seconds — and in fairness he came within 0.7 seconds of achieving that.
“You could tell from the very first lap in first practice when he was 1.8 seconds quicker than the rest of field that he was totally focused on this event.
“It’s a circuit that he loves and enjoys and it’s the ultimate drivers circuit as a test around here.
“It was an outstanding performance. His laps in qualifying yesterday, particularly his final lap, will stand out as one of the best laps of all time in qualifying.
“He then converted that after not the best of getaways, but he was able to hand on to the lead thereafter and build a very commanding lead and win the race.
“He’s just a racer. He doesn’t need a lot of motivation, but he certainly came here very keen to re-establish the season he’s been having.”
While Red Bull Racing’s championship run is likely to continue for at least another season, both Verstappen and Horner know that they’re enjoying a purple patch unlikely to be seen again for many years. Victories and titles may flow, but it’s deeply unlikely that Red Bull Racing wills steamroll the series a second time in 2024.
It makes completing the year on a high, even with so little left on the line, the team’s remaining priority after Verstappen almost certainly claims his drivers title in Qatar in a fortnight.
“It’s a golden moment for the team,” Horner said. “To do better than we are doing is impossible.
“We are riding a wave and we want to ride that wave as long as we can, but F1 is a fast-moving business. Singapore demonstrated that there can be zero complacency.”
It also means we should appreciate witnessing history while we still can.
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