What if Verstappen and Red Bull had never raced in F1 2023?

Fernando Alonso humbles Lewis Hamilton then Carlos Sainz in wheel-to-wheel combat plus profits from Charles Leclerc’s engine failure to win the opening race of 2023. The two-time Formula 1 world champion’s Bahrain success marks his first victory since the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.

Aston Martin sporting director Andy Stevenson earns his pay cheque by successfully protesting a 10-second penalty to cement another Alonso triumph in Saudi Arabia. What a winter recovery for a team that finished seventh in the 2022 constructors’ points!

But then Hamilton emerges unscathed from the late carnage down under to get off the mark aboard the capricious W14. Does this signal a blockbuster title fight lies in wait between the two ex-McLaren team-mates?

That’s what the narrative might have looked like after the first three rounds of the 2023 season in a hypothetical world where Red Bull does not compete in F1. Of course, simply wiping Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez from the results of 22 GPs only paints a two-dimensional picture.

It doesn’t, for example, restore Esteban Ocon to the points in a Qatar sprint race from which he was eliminated in a multi-car collision involving Nico Hulkenberg and Perez. Nor does deleting the RB19s turn back the clock for Lando Norris to alter how he attacks Turn 1 in Brazil when it’s no longer pointless to burn through his Pirelli tyres if Verstappen will inevitably surge back past.

But it does indicate how tight the field was behind the Milton Keynes attack. Theoretically, remove the Red Bulls and there are six different GP winners (Alonso, Hamilton, Leclerc, Sainz, Norris and Oscar Piastri), rather than the actual three (Verstappen, Perez, Sainz). The drivers’ championship is decided by just 17 points rather than the true 290-point chasm that opened between Verstappen and Perez, with Hamilton a further 51 points in arrears. The constructors’ crown also goes down to the wire, with only seven points settling the spoils.