Red Bull's F1 dominance ending compared to reaching “summit of Everest”

Ex-F1 driver David Coulthard believes it was inevitable Red Bull’s dominance would come to an end after 2023, drawing a comparison to being “close to the summit of Everest”.

Red Bull won 21 of the 22 races in 2023 in what was a historic year for the team.

Fast forward to 2024, they dropped down to third in the F1 constructors’ championship, winning just two of the last 14 races.

It was still enough for Max Verstappen to win his fourth consecutive title, but Red Bull’s era of dominance had truly come to an end.

When assessing his former team’s difficulties last year, Coulthard conceded that Red Bull found it “very difficult” to “innovate” after their record-breaking campaign.

“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.”

Red Bull still won more races than McLaren and Ferrari in 2024 – even though those two teams finished ahead in the F1 constructors’ championship.

Coulthard added: “There was clearly a path, a direction that they took with the car that still won ten (nine) Grand Prix, still more than any other.

“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.”

Coulthard hails McLaren turnaround

It’s been a remarkable two years for McLaren.

They started the 2023 campaign with the slowest car, as both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri languished at the back of the grid.

An upgrade in Austria transformed their season as Norris regularly finished on the podium behind Verstappen in the second part of the year.

In 2024, an upgrade in Miami turned them from the third-fastest team to title contenders.

“It has always been in the ability of the top teams to deliver performance from one season to the next,” Coulthard 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.”