Mercedes technical director James Allison said in his first interview after the contract extension, "One of the most admirable things about Red Bull is that they have always stayed their course during a long period of slumps, and now is the time for them to reap the rewards, and that all seems to have been set a few years ago." ”
Allison clearly sees Red Bull's journey back to the top, highlighting that Red Bull's ability to adjust their mindset in such a long rule cycle is far beyond that of any other team, and even for a team with more resources and talent, it takes years to gain an advantage, and once it reaches a certain point, their advantage will last long enough to use the Chinese phrase "accumulation" There is not much more suitable for Red Bull Racing, and there is also a spirit in Red Bull that is also worth learning from other teams, that is, never be satisfied with the status quo, and always use yesterday's self as a starting point to achieve greater transcendence.
Instead, let's take a look at how Ferrari has declined, with the departures of Ross Brown, Todd, Schumacher and Rorybein, the soul of the Prancing Horse is gone, they are no longer a cohesive team, but the combination of Marco, Horner and Nuvey is still working wonders, a team that has been around for almost 20 years.
In terms of racing technology, before the advent of turbocharged engines, Red Bull had dominated the naturally aspirated era, and their core competency was aerodynamics, and this changed overnight with the introduction of turbocharged engines in 2014, and the power unit became the most important core competency of racing cars in that era, in Newvey's words, if the difference between a good chassis and a better chassis was 0.5 seconds, then a good engine would be 1 second or even 1.5 seconds slower than a better engine, and this was exactly the seven years from 2014 to 2020, both the actual gap between the Renault engine and the Honda engine and Mercedes.
Some fans will ask, if Red Bull is equipped with Mercedes engines, will Silver Arrows still dominate F1 for those 8 years? I believe that more people will give the answer "no", which is why Red Bull abandoned the Renault engine at that time and tried to seek cooperation with Mercedes but was rejected by the German manufacturer, because the Brackley team knew that once Red Bull used its own engine, they would be defeated by Red Bull, and this situation would not be in McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams are present because they are different from Red Bull, who are too aerodynamically designed.
The biggest difference between Mercedes and Red Bull is that the Silver Arrows team has the largest industrial scale in the paddock, while Red Bull has the most innovative design team in the paddock, in other words, the competition between these two teams is more like a competition between an industrial giant and a professional racing team, the two are not the same thing at all, so the two will not have the same understanding of F1, Mercedes is better at using the industrial manufacturing capabilities and accumulation in the engine, while Red Bull is better at how to use the rules to maximize their aerodynamic advantages, in the final analysis, the core competitiveness of the two teams is completely different。
With Mercedes running out of engines and not making great strides in chassis design, 2021 saw a turning point in the paddock seating as Red Bull began to overtake Mercedes using its aerodynamic strengths, a trend that was actually predictable and not unexpected.
In previous years, Red Bull was always able to build a car that was more aerodynamically efficient than Mercedes, but Brixworth's ability was too strong, which is why the AMG engine is the strongest engine on the planet, any aerodynamic advantage will be worn out by Mercedes' engine, which is also the reason why Red Bull paid so much attention to the car's performance in slow corners in those years, because the engine requirements in these corners are relatively low, and this is the only area where Red Bull can gain an advantage。
And in those years, Red Bull was further hit by rule changes, such as banning the addition of any wings that help with airflow wash on the front wing end face in 2019 and reducing the height of the air breaker, these rules actually had a greater impact on Red Bull with a high-pitch floor design than Mercedes with a low-pitch floor, but in 2021, the FIA trimmed the edge of the floor, and this hurt Mercedes more obviously, and Red Bull almost found the right direction, and the trend of the two teams began to appear a golden cross, and this trend has become irreversible although F1 has entered the era of ground effectsAnd with the increasing power of Honda's engine, Red Bull has once again relied on its own chassis design capabilities to return to the top.
Relatively speaking, Mercedes is not actually prepared for the rules of the ground effect, and even if James Allison is recalled, it is unlikely that it will achieve a turnaround in this rule cycle before 2026, and the reason for this judgment is that Allison has no idea what the height of his rival Red Bull is, so it is impossible for him to know how big the gap between them and Red Bull is, so it is impossible to talk about surpassing Red Bull.