Nico Rosberg has pondered whether Red Bull will draw personnel away from the 2025 car and shift the focus back onto 2024 as they try to fend off McLaren in the championships.
After two dominant seasons, F1 2023 yielding 21 wins in 22 races as they were denied a clean sweep by Ferrari, Red Bull have faced intense pressure on the track this season.
Red Bull face a conundrum, focus on 2024 car or 2025?
So much so they’ve already lost the lead in the Constructors’ Championship to McLaren with predictions that on current form the Drivers’ title could also head to Woking.
McLaren’s 2024 gains, the result of spot-on upgrades, coupled with Red Bull’s misstep with their in-season development has seen the Woking team take the fight to Red Bull.
With four Grands Prix wins split between the two drivers and a 14-race podium streak, McLaren are 41 points up on Red Bull while Lando Norris is only 52 behind Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ standings as he has nibbled at the Dutchman’s lead in the last four events. Oscar Piastri, although P4, is also closing in.
It begs the question, with so much at stake, will Red Bull or even McLaren take staff away from the 2025 design to focus on this year’s car?
It’s a situation Rosberg pondered on the Sky F1 podcast.
F1 2024: The championship fight no one saw coming
“What’s interesting for me is the teams,” said the 2016 F1 champion. “The teams usually from the end of spring, summer, they start to put almost 100 per cent resources into next year.
“And with the championship fight going on like that, though, I wonder if Red Bull need to kind of reallocate more resources actually to this year now, and kind of backtrack on that.
“And McLaren, obviously, probably still need to be pushing really hard this year. And that’s also an interesting dynamic, how much resources teams allocate then to this year’s car.”
Meanwhile, his fellow podcast pundit Matt Gallagher thinks Red Bull will be using the break between Singapore and the United States Grand Prix to take stock of what’s been going on given their dwindling fortunes and balance issues.
“Red Bull will be breathing a sigh of relief, I think, to be able to just sit back and really analyse what’s gone on,” he said.
“How I see it is, we rock up to Austin and Red Bull still haven’t figured it out, I think it goes down to the wire, and we really could have a title battle that I don’t think anybody dreamed of after we saw the Bahrain result. That was looking like a Max walkover.
“But yeah, if Austin is still close, you’ve got four teams that can easily… Lando could get a first place, Max finishes seventh or eighth, that’s a huge swing of points. We haven’t seen that much, and that’s the reason why Max still has this really healthy lead.
“But it’s so possible. It’s in McLaren’s hands. They are absolutely the fastest team in Formula One right now, but Austin’s a bit more of a traditional track. So I’m looking forward to seeing how they all stack up there, because it’s going to paint a picture, I think for the rest of the season.”
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