【F1 Special Topic】Red Bull Double Horns~Red Bull Team Rivalry

Before the deadline, this year’s season ran five races, and the two Red Bull drivers won three races and two races each, and four of the five races were 1-2... In terms of championship, unless the Red Bull factory is bombed, other teams have no chance Sing, and when these two corners evolve into mutual corners, what will happen to the team's position?

BookThe February issue of this column discussed the relationship between the No. 1 and No. 2 drivers of Red Bull. Max Verstappen's number one position in the team is beyond doubt. With Red Bull's invincible state since the start of the season, it stands to reason that Verstappen should be able to achieve three consecutive championships. , but teammate Sergio Perez also showed a high degree of stability: Unless something happens in qualifying like in Australia, at least the second place can be locked in the final, which gradually puts pressure on Verstappen.

In the Azerbaijan station, although Charles Leclerc started from the front row in both the new sprint race and the final, Ferrari's long-distance performance was not as good as Red Bull's. Perez, who ranked second in the sprint race, overwhelmed Verstappen to the end in 17 laps, and continued this trend. In the final, he not only killed Leclerc again, but also benefited from the fact that Verstappen encountered the safety car after the first stoppage and lost time. , Perez not only arranged the sprint race and the final of this station, but also became the first driver in the history of this station to win two championships.

The two drivers alternated to win

Continuing to continue the momentum, Perez took pole position in the Miami station, which is also a street race; and with more than 1 minute left in qualifying Q3, because Leclerc hit the wall and triggered a red flag, it ended early, and Verstappen failed to run an effective lap time He only started on the 9th, but he used the hard tire first and ran at a speed that was completely better than his teammates who used the medium tire first. Less than half of the race, he had already started to compete with Perez, and finally won the victory and caught up with his teammates. Pull away again.

After five races, no Red Bull with a record of unbeaten wins has won consecutive victories. Verstappen and Perez have alternately won each race, but the difference in points is 14 points. A big reason is that the latter did not get on the podium in one race, which made the former unable to win. Not acknowledging that his teammates are his biggest opponents defending the title, one can’t help but think of the championship competition between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes team in the past few years: the car is unique, the two are high and stable enough, the comparison is the turnover rate, as long as there is a situation, It may become the key to the overall situation.

However, what is the reason for Perez's sharp rise this year? Three of the first five races were pure street races, and he won two races in these three races, and the last five of his current six victories in F1 career are all street races, which shows that this can be regarded as his strong point. What about the problem? Here we go again: Will Perez still be able to catch up with Verstappen on average as the race returns to the Continental home and the proportion of generally closed circuits increases? His bargaining chip remains the forte he is known for in F1: tire protection.

Problems faced by the team

Perez has been known for his ability to manage tires since early in his F1 career, and has even been hailed as a master of time management – ​​oh no – tire management (which is true! If you manage your tires well in racing, you can manage them well. Lap time), but as far as he himself said, his tire management skills have been useless to Red Bull, and even become a major weakness. If it is difficult to adapt, it is often eliminated before it is too late.

However, Perez has long been familiar with how to manage tires. The homework he has to do is how to apply these skills to the Red Bull car with extreme personality. Originally, the results have been achieved at the end of the 2021 season, but the new racing specifications in 2022 have made him fall into a trap. Due to the dilemma, he had a thorough review with the engineer during the winter break, allowing him to have a deeper understanding of the design concept of the Red Bull racing car and the best point of performance. The results are presented in the results of this year's season.

Such an evolution is of course very good for the team, making their overwhelming dominance unstoppable, but anyone can imagine the new questions that will arise from this: Will Red Bull allow the "number two driver" to freely compete for the championship? Although Verstappen is hard to beat, and his performance in Miami proved that the street race is no longer his door, but if Perez can always compete with his teammates, the team will face whether it can be like Mercedes used to treat Hamilton and Rosberg. The level of public opinion pressure, after all, this is the unique extravagant trouble of the Duqiang team...

Wang Yiping

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