Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali is confident Red Bull’s rivals will tackle a key area of their superiority next season.
In the second year since F1 overhauled its technical regulations in the hope of producing closer racing, Red Bull and Max Verstappen achieved unprecedented levels of dominance. Verstappen clinched the world championship with six grands prix remaining.
“I would say congratulations to Max,” Domenicali told Sky. “He has set something impressive in terms of maturity, in terms of standards, to Red Bull.”
However he said the season proved it is possible for their rivals to close on them. “To the ones that were saying with the budget cap you cannot develop the car, I would say McLaren proved that is not right.” McLaren struggled to escape Q1 in the opening races, but climbed to fourth in the championship at the end of the season.
Although Red Bull won 21 out of 22 grands prix, they were beaten to pole position eight times, as their RB19 was typically far more competitive in race trim than in qualifying. Domenicali expects their rivals will make progress in this area next year.
“You see [on] Saturday in qualifying, 20 cars [with]in less than one second,” said Domenicali. “So in qualifying. We are very, very close.
“Of course, race pace is different and I think that this will be the major thing that we’re going to see different next year.”
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He is optimistic the fight between the leading teams will be closer next year. “I think so,” he said. “Even if, as always, I’m a guy that doesn’t like to speak because there’s always a lot of people who are speaking and then are being contradicted.
“But I’m sure that’s the aim of all the teams to try to show the level of their engineering, the level of their capacity and capability to improve.”
Despite the one-sided nature of the competition, Domenicali said F1 is continuing to grow in popularity.
“The awareness of F1 and the growth of our sport is really magic,” he said.
“What is our focus is to make sure that the people that are avid fans like us can really believe in the sport, but also people that really are not avid fans, but they love what we are building up can be connected to us. And then it’s our duty to develop the culture of F1. This is really the beautiful challenge that we have.”
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