‘Other teams are simply too good,’ Christian Horner doubts that Red Bull will be able to continue dominating the field in 2023
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Christian Horner (IMAGO / HochZwei)
Looking at the results of the 2022 season, you would surely think that Red Bull had the dominant car, and were the dominant force. However, this wasn’t always true, especially in the first part of the season. Ferrari were consistently on level terms with Christian Horner’s team in most races before the summer break – the deficit came from their mechanical failures, crashes, and strategic missteps.
But Red Bull had their own challenges: They suffered a double retirement in the first race, and then another in the third race of the season, leaving them with a pretty big gap to bridge. They did so in style, and going into the summer break, they were leading both championships quite comfortably. In the second half of the season, Ferrari never stood a chance against them, and they only ‘lost’ in one race – The Sao Paulo GP, where it was Mercedes who dominated, with a 1-2 finish.
Even when Red Bull were at their most dominant, Ferrari were able to keep up with them on one-lap pace – but they suffered massive tyre degradation problems, and had to turn the engine down due to reliability fears as well. Despite all of this, it is fair to say that the British team were dominant during the races, winning 17 out of 22. But Christian Horner does not think they’re likely to continue dominating in the future.
Speaking to RacingNews365.com, Horner said it was ‘unrealistic’ for them to believe they can dominate again: “I’d love to continue to dominate! But it’s somewhat unrealistic in this business, because the other teams are simply too good. They will have learnt a lot of lessons from this year, and I’m sure that cars will converge significantly in ’23. The biggest winner from that is the fans, it’s obviously more stressful for the teams, but the winner is the sport if there’s more competition.”
Also Read: Christian Horner reveals extent of Daniel Ricciardo ‘third’ driver duties
Christian Horner: Some teams dominating ‘inevitable’ after a big regulation change
Earlier, Ross Brawn, who will retire as Formula 1’s managing director at the end of the year, and Nikolas Tombazis, who is ‘Head of Single Seater Technical Matters’ at the FIA, had both given remarkably similar statements, with both of them believing that because of the regulation change, the gaps between teams can be very large – some teams get it right, some get it wrong.
Both expressed belief that this will change in 2023, with the latter even saying that the gaps were ‘very low’. Like Tombazis and Brawn, Horner also thinks that the gaps to the top teams were to be expected: “It’s inevitable after a big regulation change, I think I said it last year, there’ll be teams that have got it right and there’ll be teams that have got it wrong. Who would have imagined that Mercedes have only won one race this year, after all the success that they’ve achieved in the previous eight years?”
The Briton has ‘no doubt’ that the gaps will come down, and that the field will be more competitive top-down in 2023: “We were fortunate that we got it right, and we won a lot of races as a result of getting it right, but that will converge and I’ve got no doubt that the statistics will look a little different again in 2023.” that could mean that fans will get to experience a closer title battle in 2023, especially considering Red Bull’s cost cap breach penalty – a 10% reduction to their aerodynamic testing time.
As a whole, it will take some time for the field to bunch up together. The FIA has enforced aerodynamic testing restrictions along with a cost cap to limit big teams running away with it – but the big teams still have better facilities, staff, and information. Obviously, the FIA could not take that way, but the new rules should help the smaller teams ‘catch up’ in this particular aspect. In a few years, if all goes according to plan, F1 should, in theory, have a far more competitive field.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)