SHOULD RED BULL BE WORRIED YET? OUR VERDICT ON 2024 RIVALS

Formula 1’s defending champion will bring the 2024 ‘launch season’ to a close when it reveals its RB20 on Thursday night.

Every team that’s aiming to stop Red Bull this year has taken the covers off its 2024 challenger and set out its targets for 2024 – some more bold than others.

But should any of Red Bull’s main rivals give it cause for concern based on the cars they’ve revealed and the indications they’ve given?

Ferrari, I would say, I am less than fully confident about in terms of it catching Red Bull.

It has scratched the previous concept and started again aerodynamically, as if it just wants a good platform on which to build for the next two seasons, something that the drivers can be confident in and get the best out of.

That was the summary of what technical director Enrique Cardile was saying at the launch and it kind of looks that way in the design of the car in that there is nothing very cutting-edge about it.

It ticks the boxes of a contemporary F1 car but doesn’t appear to be stretching the envelope anywhere.

Furthermore, I’m still kind of concerned that Cardile is saying something different from other technical directors in terms of the importance of suspension in this generation of cars.

Looking at the SF-24 from a glass-half-full perspective, let’s assume Ferrari’s mechanical platform – fundamentally different as the outlying rear pullrod suspension user – is not the wrong choice.

Ferrari has had good low-speed performance on certain tracks – street tracks in particular – with strong traction and good compliance over the kerbs. Clearly, the Ferrari platform makes for a good ride in certain conditions.

If that has been added to with better, more stable aerodynamic performance because Ferrari has put more focus in that area… what’s stopping this team adding proper race pace to obvious qualifying prowess? That will be the hope.

But Ferrari needs to have actually delivered on that aero work for starters. And of course, it depends on its rear suspension choice not being a factor in the weak rear-end aero performance of last year. Pushrod suspension is favoured by Ferrari’s rivals specifically because of the aerodynamic benefits.

Maybe Red Bull will be looking at that car and thinking ‘Ferrari’s missed a key trick’.

Mercedes gives me reason for optimism. Not blind optimism, but cautious optimism.

Like Ferrari, it has pretty much thrown away the concept of its cars of the previous two years – but unlike Ferrari, it appears to have innovated quite aggressively.

The car has a much more harmonious look to it and in its front wing and sidepod design there is clearly a lot of sophistication.

If that is reflected in its overall understanding of their previous problems, then yes, I can imagine moments during the season when Lewis Hamilton may be wondering if he’s done the right thing in leaving at the end of the year.

It’s not like Toto Wolff has ever started an F1 season with bombastic proclamations – even when Mercedes was obviously going to crush everyone all year yet again he’d talk of avoiding complacency at car launches.

But he was strikingly careful about his expectations for 2024 – which didn’t sound like they amounted to much better than 2023, just a hope of being slightly closer to Red Bull.

Of course he was outwardly cautious after the last two years. Maybe he needn’t be, though. Given all it’s achieved before, the chance of Mercedes failing to correctly identify and rectify its problems on two designs in a row feels highly unlikely, especially given how chastening last winter’s experience was.

It looks like there’s enough change and innovation on the 2024 car to suggest real progress.

If Mercedes isn’t closer to Red Bull and respectability this year, it’s either because Red Bull has had so much time to raise the bar while Mercedes was still untangling its own problems, or because Mercedes just fundamentally has not fathomed how to make this generation of F1 car work yet.

The MCL38 has a clear connection to its predecessor. So if you’re thinking ‘that looks a lot like what ran in Abu Dhabi’ – yes, it does.

But being an evolution of the car that outscored all except Red Bull’s dominant RB19 from the Austrian Grand Prix onwards in 2023 can’t be a bad place to start from.