"Nobody was saying they were going to fight Max": David Croft stresses on the extent of Red Bull's domination this season

Renowned F1 commentator David Croft recently spoke about Red Bull's dominance in the 2023 F1 season and how no other team or driver is remotely close to them.

Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, Croft explained how teams were not even thinking of defending against Max Verstappen in the Saudi Arabian GP, where he started from 15th. All teams felt that Verstappen and Red Bull were not their fight and that they would only ruin their own race by trying to defend the reigning world champion.

The F1 commentator said that the rest of the paddock feel that Verstappen and his team are so dominant this year that they do not want to waste time fighting them head-on:

"This worries me a little bit. Going into that race, yesterday, talking to the people that we do in the paddock before a race, nobody was saying they were gonna fight Max [Verstappen] if he comes up behind them. Because, everyone is saying 'they are not our race, Red Bull aren't our race at the moment. We are not gonna make it easy for him, but we are not gonna lose too much time holding him up and ruining our own race.'"

Croft also mentioned how the cost cap and wind tunnel restrictions were implemented by the FIA to essentially prevent any single team from dominating the sport and improve close racing. Even after all the restrictions, the Milton Keynes-based team keeps innovating and dominating F1. He said:

"That does worry me a little bit, because the whole point of the cost cap, and the wind tunnel and the CFD restrictions as well was to close up the competition, so that you won't get a team blasting by as Max did to Lewis like an F2 car trying to defend against an F1 car."

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F1 pundit eludicates Red Bull RB19's aero prowess in the 2023 F1 season

F1 pundit Mark Hughes recently explained how Red Bull are already starting the 2023 F1 season with a championship-winning car. Though the RB19 looks extremely similar to the RB18 in terms of overall design, small tweaks to the bodywork and underbody concept have made their 2023 challenger much stronger.

Speaking about the underbody concept and aerodynamic improvements in The Race podcast, Hughes said:

"Red Bull's starting from a championship-winning car in the first place. So I think it's all down to the fundamental underbody concept. It's not noticeably different from lots of cars from the upper body surfaces from what we can see but we can't see that does carry a lot of downforce for a lot of little drag."

The Austrian-British team has made another huge jump in terms of performance this year, while their rivals, including Mercedes and Ferrari, struggle to find the pace to compete on track.

F1 will be back in action at the Australian Grand Prix weekend from March 31 to April 2.