Red Bull Formula 1 boss Christian Horner admits the team was “very surprised” when Mercedes’ W14 car initially retained the same concept from 2022 that had “clearly failed”.
Mercedes improved one place to second in the championship this season but still lagged a considerable 454 points behind Red Bull, who won 21 of the 22 races to be held.
Following a breakthrough win in the penultimate round of 2022 at Brazil – which remains Mercedes’ sole success in the latest ground effect era – the German marque opted to stick with its ‘zeropod’ solution for the beginning of the most recent campaign.
But Mercedes decided to abandon the philosophy after a dismal first qualifying session in Bahrain, unveiling a revised car with conventional bodywork from Monaco.
Although results improved from that point with a version of the downwash sidepod concept pioneered by Red Bull, the Brackley squad remained restricted by the design structure of its launch-spec car, resulting in a first winless season for the side since 2011.
Asked whether the declaration from the Mercedes camp at the opening round that it was scrapping its original car concept boosted Red Bull’s spirits, Horner told Autosport: “Well, Toto [Wolff, Mercedes team boss] tends to be a little dramatic anyway.”
Horner reveals that Ferrari’s troubles also proved unexpected, with the Maranello outfit having emerged as the most competitive team at the start of this regulation cycle.
“I think what surprised us was that Ferrari had a very good car last year. And the natural evolution of that we expected it to be a very tight contender this year,” he continued.
“We were very surprised to see Mercedes sticking with the concepts that had clearly failed the previous year.
“If you looked around the cars in pre-season, the cars that were closest in concept to us were the Aston Martin and McLaren.”
Red Bull transpired to dominate in Bahrain to open up the season with a 1-2 finish, but Horner documents how victory in Australia confirmed the strength of its RB19 package.
The Milton-Keynes-based side had been emphatically beaten by Ferrari at the Albert Park Circuit the previous year and hadn’t recorded a win at the venue in 12 years.
“Certainly, coming out of Bahrain, we felt like, ‘we’ve got a really good package here’,” he noted. “But we didn’t know whether it was circuit-specific – temperature, conditions, asphalt.
“So, it’s only when you’ve had a sample of two or three and you’ve gone to a couple of circuits that have been more troublesome, certainly for us the previous year, like Melbourne for example, that suddenly you’re thinking, ‘ok, no, this is really together‘.
“And so yeah, it takes a sample of a few races to get a clear overview. Nobody was coming out of Bahrain getting too carried away.”
