29 December 2023 , 17:46
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A top Red Bull chief has backed up Max Verstappen's claim that his team must work to improve weaknesses spotted despite dominating the 2023 championship.
Red Bull won all but one of the 22 races held this year. And Verstappen was himself responsible for 19 of those victories as another swathe of single-season records fell.
Still, though, the Dutchman was not wholly satisfied. Speaking to Motorsport.com, he identified where his team can improve heading into 2024 having noticed some deficiencies while driving the all-conquering RB19.
"Mainly I think just street circuits and low-speed, kerbing," he said when asked if improvements could be made to his machinery. "These kind of things, I think we are not the best at the moment."
Technical director Pierre Wache agrees with Verstappen that those should be areas of focus. He said: "The team sees that same weakness, maybe in a different perspective than Max because Max is [a driver], but it's more or less summarised quite well where we have to work for next year.
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"Low-speed is clearly [one area]. 90-degree corners we are not the best, as you could see in qualifying in Baku and a different track [type there]. Singapore also was not a fantastic one. And also, our capacity to ride the kerbs and the bumpy tracks is also not perfect and we have to improve this area.
"In our system and in this business, you never have nothing for free. You can improve the overall potential of something, but most of the time it's also affecting some other aspect of the car. [So], we have to be very careful not to destroy what we built in terms of strengths. It's what we are trying to do - improve our weaknesses without compromising too much the strengths we have."
Despite how dominant he and his team were this year, Verstappen is sure that it will not be quite so easy for them in 2024. He said: "The others will improve their cars and get closer to us. I don't think it's that realistic to achieve that win rate again. But that's fine. To already have a season like we've had is insane.
"The others are not stupid. They are all learning. Of course, the longer you keep the regulations the same, the closer it will get, because people start to understand which direction they have to develop in. Luckily, we hit the ground running really well with the regulations [in 2022], but I definitely expect next year, for sure, all will definitely take a step towards us.
"I don't know which particular team, because if you look at the whole season it has been a bit up and down for everyone except us, so I don't really know in the winter which team is going to make the biggest jump. Hopefully, of course, they still stay behind but we'll see in Bahrain."