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After the first three races of the season, Red Bull dominating 2023 will not come as a surprise to fans. Much has been said about the new regulations and how they were supposed to bring the field closer and have more competition. It's safe to say that this has not happened as there is a major gap that Red Bull enjoys over the rest of the field.
Unfortunately, for F1, Red Bull's dominance is nothing but a symptom of a bigger plague that the sport has been trying to cure itself of. A plague that started at the beginning of the 21st century and has remained a constant feature. That plague, in case you are wondering, is single-team dominance in F1, something that has become a feature far more often than not.
It all started in 2000 when Michael Schumacher and Ferrari went on a 5-year unbeaten run. The team and the driver were unbeatable and grounded the opposition into submission. When that dominance ended, F1 had five amazing years of variety and competition. We had Renault, Ferrari, McLaren, and Brawn GP mixing things up.
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From 2005 to 2009, we had four different world champions in Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, and Jenson Button. These were interesting times as new contenders emerged and made the most of the opportunity given to them. Since then, the sport has gone into overdrive in terms of single-team dominance.
The 2010 F1 season saw Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel win their first title and what followed was a 4-year unbeaten run. In 2014, Mercedes took over the baton and went on a dominant march until 2020.
The 2021 F1 season was a refreshing surprise as we had arguably the best title battle in a long time. The 2022 F1 season was supposed to be a year of change. We had the advent of new regulations that will help bunch up the field. Unfortunately, it hasn't done that at the front of the grid and Red Bull has stolen the march on everyone and is in a league of its own.
In the last 10 years, we've had only one inter-team battle for the championship and that was in 2021 between Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton. F1, as a sport, has been reeling with prolonged periods of single-team dominance in the 21st century, with arguably three of the most dominant eras in the last 23 years.
In this feature, we will take a look at the causes behind this and why all these dominant eras appear to result from a bunch of similar factors.
It's harder to reach the top now, but easier to sustain
The ecosystem where a team enters a sport and becomes a race winner within a couple of years is just not there anymore. In the early days of the sport, teams were arguably not operating at as efficient a level as they are now. These days, every small ounce of energy spent doing something is optimized.
This didn't use to be the case earlier when constructors would fashionably throw a lot of money at a problem to find a solution. Now, to succeed at the top, it's not that easy. Massive investment in infrastructure is still a need of the hour but so is getting the entire team structure optimized.
For instance, Red Bull debuted in F1 in 2005 but Christian Horner had to spend four years getting the right people, finding the right balance, and getting the infrastructure up to par. Once it was done, there was no looking back as the team dominated from 2010 to 2013.
Mercedes did the same thing as well as they cracked the code in 2014 to go on a monster run. Ferrari's success in the 2000s was a result of four years of labor as well, and so has been the case with Red Bull in 2023. In F1, it takes time and a lot of effort to nail everything and become a frontrunner. It's not easy to crack that code, but when you do, the crown is yours for a while.
Arrogance/Overconfidence of competitors
The 2000s had Williams' conflict with BMW. The engine was arguably the best, but the chassis from the Grove-based unit wasn't. In the 2010s when Red Bull was dominating, both Ferrari and McLaren dismissed the Austrian team as a 'drinks company'.
The team personnel and even the drivers like Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton leaned heavily on the glory years of Ferrari and McLaren respectively.
During Mercedes' dominance in the Turbo Hybrid era, Red Bull lost out significantly because it underestimated the importance of a good power unit. The team was massively hindered by Renault and it took the team as long as eight years to win a championship again.
Even in the current era, you could put down both Ferrari and Mercedes' insistence to stick with their concepts to arrogance. Neither of the two giants wanted to accept that they could have been wrong and as a result, they find themselves in this situation. Every time there's been a dominant run, one of the factors that has worked against teams is arrogance or overconfidence.
Peaks and Plateaus of the teams have not matched
There is one thing that fans especially do not realize. No team can continue to get things right every time. There are going to be times when things don't work their way. There are going to be times when the teams are going through a transitional phase as well.
For instance, Ferrari went through a transition period when Ross Brawn, Jean Todt, and other key members left the team. McLaren also went through it when Ron Dennis handed over the reins to Martin Whitmarsh. Mercedes are going through it right now with the team trying to get back on its feet.
One of the rare occasions in the last decade or so when more than one team has peaked was in the 2021 F1 season. Red Bull and Mercedes featured at the top of their games and what we saw was a magical season. Unfortunately, this does not happen often and we end up with one team dominating the sport over the entire field.
The first mover's advantage has tended to dictate a lot of things
Arguably the most important thing when it comes to single-team dominance is the reduced avenues of car development as compared to the 1990s and back. For Ferrari's dominance in the 2000s, this might not entirely hold true as too many restrictions were not brought in at the time.
However, when we talk about the Red Bull and Mercedes dominant era, you can see that the first mover's advantage has been the key. For any set of regulations, the team that is the first to crack the code tends to enjoy a major advantage.
During the Turbo Hybrid era, there was a limit to how much a power unit could be changed year on year. A token system was implemented to prevent teams from overspending. That worked against the competitive order as Mercedes kept their power unit advantage almost until the end of the era.
For Red Bull in the 2010s, F1 teams were still trying to figure out how to make things work without in-season testing. Wind tunnels were still a novelty and hence catching up with Red Bull was always going to be tough.
In the current era as well, it appears that the Red Bull concept is the best direction for the regulations and hence every team on the grid is slowly migrating to it.
When such a thing happens, it's safe to say that the headstart enjoyed by the Austrian team will continue.
What can F1 do to alleviate this plague Red Bull is currently benefitting from?
In all fairness, the sliding scale of reduced development time is going to come into play this season. With Red Bull having much less development time compared to its competitors, teams like Aston Martin could fancy closing the gap.
The new ground-effect era was supposed to be restrictive in nature, and there's certainly hope that the reduced development time will help the teams. It does, however, remain to be seen whether these preventive measures can help alleviate the plague in any manner.
The 2023 F1 season is a test for these regulations and it remains to be seen whether they will pass or fail.
