The faltering Red Bull project

The Red Bull Racing rise was steady until it skyrocketed. Between its debut season in 2005 and the end of 2008, the team finished no higher than fifth in the Constructors’ championship. Three podiums in four seasons must’ve had Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz wondering where all that money had gone. But since the 2009 season, Red Bull’s breakout year, the team has won 122 Grands Prix and over 40 per cent of all available championships.

During that time the team has enjoyed two periods of crushing dominance, the first when Sebastian Vettel won four Drivers’ titles in succession including a record-breaking nine Grands Prix wins in a row, and more recently with Max Verstappen, who has also won four championships with Red Bull, the third of which came in 2023 when the team won 21 races in a single season – all but one, more than any other team in history.

Not bad for a fizzy drinks maker, and not bad at all for a team that was once considered by certain grandees of the sport to be the nuisance makers of the F1 paddock. But all great kingdoms crumble sooner or later, and if these aren’t the last days of Red Bull’s empire, are they not behind us already?