The ridiculously gifted mixture of Max Verstappen driving a automobile designed by Adrian Newey needs to be stopped, man. They can’t simply preserve getting away with this. Having secured the 2023 championship with essentially the most dominant season in F1 historical past, these psychopaths aren’t content material with finest, they’ve to only smash the competitors to items. Instead of an evolutionary improvement of final yr’s RB19, the 2024 RB20 is a totally completely different aerodynamic idea, and it already appears like Red Bull has gained extra tempo than the remainder of the grid. It’s solely pre-season testing, and we are able to’t utterly rule out different groups packing a couple of luggage of sand into their automobiles, however all of us already know Max goes to win the championship this yr.
Search your emotions. You understand it to be true.
The flying Dutchman confirmed up on Wednesday in Bahrain and completely waxed the ground with the competitors. The Red Bull Racing driver not solely turned a 1:31.344 lap (in comparison with Lando Norris’ finest lap for McLaren at 1:32.484), however he additionally ran 143 laps of testing. Including Max’s outlier, the common variety of laps run by every of the eighteen drivers who took half in day certainly one of testing was simply 68.6. Logan Sargeant managed simply 21 laps within the Williams, whereas George Russell did second most at 122 laps for Mercedes. Max ran two and a half races price of laps, and nonetheless managed to kick within the quickest time of the day.
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By the top of 2023 the McLaren and Mercedes groups had been beginning to catch as much as Red Bull when it comes to single lap tempo, however the RB19 was considerably simpler on its tires than the competitors, which made for significantly better race tempo. If that continues to be the case in 2024, they could as effectively name Max the winner proper now. Fortunately for the followers who haven’t given up on F1, the McLaren, Ferrari, Visa Cash App RB, Alpine, and Aston Martins all ended up inside a second of one another, so the race for second place needs to be fairly sturdy. Mercedes (we hope) by no means put in a push lap, as Russell’s finest time was 2.765 seconds off Verstappen’s.
If there’s one factor we are able to depend on in 2024, it’s Red Bull on the entrance and Haas on the again. It’ll take 24 races to find out the place the opposite eight groups shake out. Is it price watching to search out out?
Testing continues in Bahrain by means of February 23, and the season opens with the primary spherical on the identical observe with qualifying on March 1 and lights exit for the inaugural Grand Prix of the 2024 season on March 2. Congratulations, Max!
Source: jalopnik.com