After Liberty Media took over Formula 1 at the end of 2016 it installed former team principal Ross Brawn in charge of the series. Reinvigorating what had become an increasingly uncompetitive championship ranked highly among his priorities.
The new owners ousted Bernie Ecclestone, whose favourable commercial deals with F1’s top teams ensured the richest outfits received the greatest financial rewards, which in turn guaranteed their continued success and gradually eliminated competition for the top places.
Changing that deeply entrenched advantage would prove an enormous challenge. After Liberty Media’s first two seasons in charge, Brawn reflected that the domination of F1’s podium positions by Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari had only been broken on two occasions in that time.
“Two podiums from a total of 123 is unacceptable,” he said. “Especially when it comes with an ever-increasing technical and financial divide.
“It’s a problem we are tackling together with the FIA and the teams, because the future of F1 depends on it.”
Brawn devised a twin-pronged solution which would prevent the richest teams spending their way to success and help those which had fallen behind to catch up. One much-vaunted element of this was F1’s first budget cap, introduced in 2021. Now all teams had the same spending limit covering much of their car development, it would force the richest competitors to rein in their spending.
F1 also introduced a new handicap system for 2021 under which the most successful teams in one season faced tighter development restrictions than their rivals the following year.
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The new rules could not be introduced immediately after Liberty Media’s takeover as they had to be agreed in line with F1’s regulatory system. In the meantime, Brawn urged fans to be patient. For a while, he penned a column for the official F1 website after every race, the gist of which could often be summarised as ‘well, that wasn’t very exciting, but once we’re done levelling the playing field everything will be better’.
Brawn stepped down from his role last year having initially proclaimed his overhaul of the regulations a success. But what must he have made of the first two races of 2023?
Red Bull locked out the front row of the grid for the opening round in Bahrain and would surely have done the same in Saudi Arabia had Max Verstappen’s driveshaft not failed during Q2. But even with the reigning world champion lining up a lowly 15th, the team romped to a second consecutive one-two.
While Red Bull’s advantage in qualifying over their closest rivals was in the region of a few tenths of a second, their margin in the races was huge. In Bahrain they were the only front-running team capable of running two stints on the soft tyres instead of two on hards, and even at a canter Verstappen won by 38 seconds. In Saudi Arabia, with Verstappen pushing flat-out in his attempt to regain lost ground, Red Bull out-paced their rivals on the same tyre compounds by over a second per lap.
F1 is facing domination on the scale of Mercedes’ annihilation of the competition between 2014 and 2016. That is not compatible with Liberty Media’s view of how F1 should be. So will they react, and if so, how?
One option would be to sit tight and keep the faith that their rules will even out the competition over time. This has potentially already begun. At Mercedes the penny has finally dropped that their original design solution for the current regulations was wrong and an alternative is needed. Ferrari appear to just be discovering their car is in need of extensive changes, as the SF-23 produces respectable pace for a single lap but chews its tyres in the races.
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Then there is Aston Martin, which over the first two races have leapt forward by an average of two seconds compared to last year and bagged a podium each time out courtesy of the irrepressible Fernando Alonso. With an overhauled car compared to last year, a new factory opening soon and a 50% higher restriction on aerodynamic development than Red Bull, they may represent the best hope for those eager to see competition at the front this year.
Or perhaps Liberty Media will decide that 12 wins in the last 13 races for Red Bull is quite enough and more direct intervention is needed to for the sake of – that dread phrase – ‘the show’.
Of course Liberty Media do not set the rules, the FIA do. But we’ve seen in the recent past how the two organisations have worked together and we have seen their willingness to tinker with the rules in the past.
A desire to cut downforce after 2020 produced a change to the floor regulations which just happened to hit that year’s runaway leaders Mercedes harder than most, teeing up their championship fight with Red Bull the following year.
Two years earlier Liberty Media introduced a revision to the front wing rules in the name of improving overtaking. This was at best a qualified success – any improvement in the racing was hard to discern, but perhaps it prevented a bad situation getting worse.
Among the strongest critics of that change was Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. But the prospect of a short-term tweak in the technical rules now would surely frustrate him far more, and not just because of the potential threat to his team’s dominant position.
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Red Bull’s budget cap breach during 2021 was punished by a fine and a cut in their aerodynamic development allocation. As the reigning champions, they were already due to have the smallest proportion of any team this year – 70% of the reference total, compared to second-placed Ferrari’s 80% – but their cost cap penalty trimmed that further, to 63%.
That reduction means Red Bull are “going to have to be very selective and extremely efficient in how we develop this car and, of course, next year’s car,” said Horner in Bahrain. Above all, their rivals will be better placed to adapt to any change in the rules.
“It really depends if anything changes in the regulations,” said Horner. “We’re expecting stable regulations.” Whether or not Red Bull get that wish may depend on how crushing their expected success over the coming races is.
Former Mercedes technical director Paddy Lowe has said that during the height of their domination in 2014 team principal Toto Wolff repeatedly urged him to avoid revealing the full potential of their car out of a concern rules changes might follow to neuter their advantage. Wolff has disputed this claim.
Some within Red Bull may already be thinking they should do something similar to prevent a rules change which could hit them where they are potentially most vulnerable. Assuming they aren’t doing so already…
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