Zak Brown predicts when Red Bull’s ‘turmoil’ will come back to haunt them
Could McLaren’s Miami win be just the first for 2024?
Red Bull’s rivals have closed the gap partly due to “diminishing returns” for the World Champs, but come 2026, Zak Brown believes the effect of their early-season “turmoil” will be evident on the track.
After two years of trying to catch Red Bull, this season McLaren made huge inroads with their Miami Grand Prix upgrade that resulted in a maiden F1 victory for Lando Norris.
Zak Brown surprised how rivals have closed the gap
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper
The team hasn’t been able to repeat that feat but they have recorded five runner-up results in the six races since, outscoring Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship.
However, it’s not just McLaren who have taken the fight to Red Bull with Ferrari and Mercedes both winning two Grands Prix apiece.
This has led to talk of Red Bull being in a genuine title fight with Brown admitting he’s surprised given the state of play at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen won by 22s in a Red Bull 1-2.
Asked by the media, including PlanetF1.com, if he was ‘surprised’, the McLaren CEO replied: “Yeah, I think all of us are. I think we all went to Bahrain and went, ‘that’s the championship’.
“It’s gonna be an epic. Mercedes seems to be very on the pace now. Ferrari are there or thereabouts not too many races ago when Charles won.
“So you kind of feel like you’ve got four different teams that are all going to win races in the second half of the year. So pretty, pretty awesome. Unfortunate the season didn’t start now.”
Max Verstappen effect v F1 rival engineers
How the Max Verstappen effect is beating McLaren’s brains and computers
Uncovered: New front flexi-wing designs from Mercedes and McLaren
Diminishing returns and turmoil for Red Bull
It begs the question, what has changed between Bahrain and today that Red Bull are counting the points in the championship?
Brown puts that down to Red Bull being quick out of the blocks back in 2022, the first year with the ground-effect aerodynamic cars, leaving the Milton Keynes squad with less room to improve compared to their rivals.
“It’s my opinion as opposed to fact,” he explained, “I think they got to kind of terminal velocity, if you’d like, quicker than the rest of us. And there does come a point of diminishing returns as far as just how much you can continue to develop a car.
“I think credit to them, got there first, and now we’re all just caught up, or almost caught up.”
Pressed on whether Red Bull’s early-season turmoil had also played a role, Brown, who has had a fair amount to say in the past having called for greater transparency into the Christian Horner investigation, reckons that impact will only be felt in 2026, especially the loss of Adrian Newey.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the turmoil will have more of a mid to longer-term impact. You know Adrian Newey… this car was done last year, what they are racing now was done when everything was fine.
“I think it’s more of ’26, when you got a new engine coming, what’s going on with the driver front. I think that’s where you potentially are going to see the lack of stability that appears to be there maybe come through a little bit.
“Winning holds things together and as that becomes more of a challenge for them, I think that’s where you might see some more fractures in various relationships inside that camp.”
Formula 1 will put new cars and engines on the track in 2026, and it will be the first time in two decades that their F1 car won’t be spearheaded by design legend Newey who announced in May he was tired, “Forrest Gump” tired, and wanted a break.
He went on to hint that Red Bull’s early-season drama also played a role in his decision, saying: “I guess over the winter a little bit and then as events have unfolded this year, I thought… I am in the very lucky position where I don’t need to work to live.”
Read next: Follow PlanetF1.com’s WhatsApp channel for all the F1 breaking news!
