Max Verstappen overlooked Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes team to name McLaren as the biggest threat to him and Red Bull next year.
Mercedes finished second in the constructors’ standings while no non-Red Bull driver outperformed Hamilton over the course of 2023. But McLaren’s improvement from the start of the season to the end makes Verstappen think his most likely British challenger next term is going to be Lando Norris.
“We were the only team that was really consistent,” he told the Talking Bull podcast. “Behind us was really up and down, it was one team second and then another team, so that’s where the battle was quite close.
“It will all depend on how much they improve in the winter time, but in terms of which one was the most impressive behind us from where they started to where they ended was definitely McLaren. So, it looks like they might be very strong next year.”
Red Bull won all but one of the 22 races across the season in the most dominant campaign by a single team that Formula 1 has ever seen. And the same can be said for Verstappen on a personal level after securing 19 of those 21 victories.
Their dominance meant the team got a head-start on their rivals in terms of their 2024 car development, leading to concerns they will be streets ahead again. But both Verstappen and team principal Christian Horner have said they anticipate the performance gap will be narrower next year with Red Bull close to the ceiling of what can be achieved with the current regulations.
“The others will improve their cars and get closer to us,” the Dutchman told BBC Radio 5 Live’s season review show. “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.”
And Horner added: ” I’m fully expecting, with stable regs and diminishing returns for us because I think we got to the top of the curve quicker than others, the field is going to converge… If you stand still in this business, you tend to be going backwards. And I think that we have got up that curve quicker than others. But we’re into a law of diminishing returns.”
