Red Bull’s unbeaten start this year has led to early speculation the team can be the first to record an unbeaten Formula One season.
But can it really be done in a 22-race season? On pure pace alone, Max Verstappen thinks so.
“When you look at it realistically with how quick the car is, yes [it’s possible]”, he said ahead of Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, where he could move joint-fifth all-time by matching Ayrton Senna’s 41 wins.
Examples of perfection in sports generally are rare. The fabled Miami Dolphins of 1972 hold a special place in NFL lore for their perfect season, while Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ of the 2002/03 are the only team to go unbeaten in a Premier League season. Red Bull would certainly establish themselves in similar company if they did the same this year, but the team has been downplaying any suggestion of the feat.
If it’s so rare, why the talk of an unbeaten year?
Red Bull has won 17 out of the last 18 races, with George Russell’s win for Mercedes at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix in November the only blemish on that run. To put its record into American sporting terms, Red Bull is 24-5 since the start of 2022.
The margins of Red Bull’s seven wins this year have been remarkable. On all but one occasion it has been had at least 20 seconds in hand.
Gap to next non-Red Bull car:
Bahrain Grand Prix – 38.637 seconds
Saubi Arabian Grand Prix – 20.728 seconds
Australian Grand Prix – 0.179 seconds (Race finished with drivers in formation behind Safety Car)
Azerbaijan Grand Prix – 21.217 seconds
Miami Grand Prix – 26.305 seconds
Monaco Grand Prix – 27.921 seconds
Spanish Grand Prix – 24.090 seconds
Verstappen would have likely won by a similarly comfortable margin in Australia but had a healthy lead wiped out by a late red flag. That meant a stoppage to the race and a restart from the grid. Verstappen held the lead at the restart, where a multi-car pile-up prompted another red flag. The race finished with cars driving at a slower pace in a single file behind Verstappen, who was following the Safety Car.
To put those gaps into simpler terms, Red Bull has either had or been on the verge of having a gap so big it could pit its lead car one extra time at the end of the race and still emerge ahead. That shows you just how much of an obstacle Red Bull’s rivals need to overcome before they are even confident of being able to challenge the world champions on raw pace alone.
Mercedes felt it made a breakthrough with its new upgrade at the Spanish Grand Prix but were still comfortably second best. Toto Wolff told Sky Sports he felt the 24 seconds Lewis Hamilton finished behind Verstappen would have been closer to 15 or 16 had he not eased off at the end, but the team is still clearly a long way behind and heads to Canada and Austria expecting a tougher race.
Aston Martin, the surprise package of 2023 so far, and Ferrari are also hoping to close the gap as the year continues. Rivals are hoping Red Bull’s windtunnel penalty — a punishment for breaching the 2021 budget cap — will hurt their car development later in the year, although the outcome of that punishment remains to be seen.
How difficult will an undefeated season be?
Despite Red Bull’s clear advantage, after a look through F1’s history the answer still has to be: Very.
The closest any team has come was the iconic McLaren MP4-4 of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in 1988 – it scored 15 wins out of 16, totalling 93.8 percent of the wins available that year. Their only defeat came when Gerhard Berger claimed an emotional win for Ferrari at the Italian Grand Prix, three weeks after the death of team founder Enzo Ferrari. But it could so easily have been a perfect season. Senna was leading that race until he was hit by a backmarker at the first corner of the penultimate lap, handing Berger and Michele Alborteto a one-two finish for the Italian team.
Verstappen himself pointed this out ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix: “We can — but it’s very unrealistic. There is always things that will go wrong in a season that is sometimes out of your control. I’m not thinking that is possible.
“I think there was only one year where McLaren was close to this, it was one race. And that was less races than now.”
Of the Mercedes dynasty which preceded this dominant Red Bull team, its closest was the 19 out of 21 race wins (90 percent) in 2016. Looking back, an unbeaten season was tantalisingly close for Mercedes. Both defeats were at the hands of Red Bull — Verstappen claimed his maiden F1 win in Spain when Hamilton and Rosberg collided and took each other out of the race, while Daniel Ricciardo won in Malaysia after Hamilton’s engine failed while he had a healthy lead.
Mercedes won 16 out of 19 (84 percent) in both 2014 and 2015 and won eight straight to open the 2019 season, a feat Red Bull will match if it finishes first at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Going further back, in the dominant Michael Schumacher years, Ferrari’s best record was 15 wins out of 17 in 2002.
What (or who) is the biggest obstacle to an unbeaten year?
There is an old saying in motor racing — to finish first, first you have to finish.
Even the fastest cars are not guaranteed to finish a race, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the car breaking down during the grand prix.
A lack of car reliability was an issue for Red Bull at the start of 2022 as Ferrari won two of the opening three races, but the team quickly solved those problems and walked away with the championship from there. Part of what makes this Red Bull team so impressive currently is how strong it has looked from a car reliability standpoint, although Verstappen encountered a driveshaft failure in qualifying for this year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The other thing which stops a quick car from finishing is what Senna experienced at Monza, a collision with another car. Verstappen has actually experienced similar, losing a likely victory at the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix when he collided with the backmarking Esteban Ocon. Verstappen and Hamilton also collided while battling for the lead on three occasions during their incredible 2021 title battle.
Between 2014 and 2016 Hamilton’s bitter rivalry with teammate Rosberg at Mercedes opened the door for other teams to win, but we are yet to see a similar incident between Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez and the dynamic is very different. Perez has rarely had the opportunity to go wheel to wheel with Verstappen so this seems a less likely outcome in 2023.
Either way — the consensus in the paddock is the Red Bull is good enough right now to win them all. Whether the team’s luck is remains to be seen.