I’ve written much this year, about Formula One teams’ race strategies, the ways they go about deciding those strategies and the way the best laid plans have panned out over each race weekend. I’ve talked about the way teams operate from top to bottom, how drivers have performed and analyzed whether things could’ve been done differently to maximize potential. Looking back, there are very few things one team in particular could, or should, have altered for a better outcome.
During the course of each season, those on the front line at every team are faced with a massive series of challenges to overcome, ever-moving goal posts through which to score and constantly unpredictable sets of circumstances and conditions in which to do it. Those who do the very best job, over the entire season, the ones who predict the unpredictable, make the best decisions and react best as events unfold, are normally crowned World Champions.
No one can say Red Bull Racing is undeserving of that title.
The design department, led of course by Adrian Newey, did a good job of developing a car over the winter from the one that finished the 2012 season as arguably second fastest. The RB9 began 2013 as a real contender, but ended it in a completely different class than everybody else. The team continued to bring upgrades even to the last few races of the season, despite already winning both championships and just got further and further in front.
McLaren took a strategic decision with the design of their new car at the tail end of 2012, citing the fact that the relatively stable regulations for the following year meant there was little scope for teams to continue developing an already well used concept under the same set of rules. Somehow Red Bull have not only managed to do just that, but by working hard on specific areas of aero, tire management and engine usability, they’ve pulled out the kind of gains not often seen in any season, let alone one where rules have remained this restrictive.
Alongside car development, the team managed to excel in just about every area of Formula One.
Strategically, the engineers on the pit wall, together with the team operating from their Milton Keynes base, have managed to execute some inspired race plans to leave rivals wondering where they went wrong.
In the pitlane, the boys and girls in blue have moved forward too. From a team that were perhaps third quickest and occasionally unreliable a year ago, they’ve developed technology and procedures to move themselves to the forefront of the pitstop league and perhaps fittingly, set a new world record for the fastest F1 tire change ever, in 2013.
It’s often too easy to say that with the fastest car, the job of the team, engineers and strategists becomes an easy one. I can tell you, from experience, that’s not true. I’ve been involved in campaigns over the years where we’ve had the pace setting cars, yet failed to take overall spoils because every single element of the F1 team’s job wasn’t carried out to perfection, so I take my hat off in admiration at what’s been achieved.
To finish Sunday’s race with a 1-2 standing is representative of the way Red Bull finished the season. Dominant in so many areas, the current era of our sport comes to an end in Brazil with the rest of the field squabbling over the scraps left behind.
It’s a tough job getting it all right at exactly the right time, but that’s exactly what this Red Bull Racing team has done in 2013 and, together with a much celebrated young driver, still writing his own incredible passage of history, they need to applauded as much as he is.
Who knows what 2014 will bring, but one thing’s for sure, whatever order of competitiveness the new rule book throws up in March, come December it’ll be those who’ve adapted, developed, planned and reacted best that stand on the top step again.