The 2022 season was a dominant one for Red Bull, as the team wrapped up both championships with multiple races to spare, with Max Verstappen winning a record breaking 15 races on his way to championship glory.
While other teams struggled to get to grips with the major regulation changes that came into effect at the start of the year, Red Bull were consistently quick, proving almost unbeatable at points in the season.
The team have been quick to kick off their 2023, launching their season and unveiling the RB19 at the start of the month, weeks before Mercedes and Ferrari are set to do the same.
With a massive season ahead of them, Red Bull’s chief advisor Helmut Marko has claimed that they are on track for another successful season, with pre-season so far going as planned.
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“Everything is going smoothly with the preparations,” he told F1 Insider.
“Everything is on schedule.”
The energy drink giant’s defence of their 2022 title will be made much more difficult by the fact that they will have much less testing time than their rivals, mainly as a result of their punishment for breaching the 2021 cost cap.
This punishment has been labelled as ‘draconian’ by team principal Christian Horner, who has claimed that it could cost the team up to half a second in lap time this year.
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On the contrary, Ferrari have reportedly shaved over a second off of their lap times for this season, meaning that the gap between the two teams could be set to close significantly.
Mercedes are also set to improve, having started slowly under the new regulations last year due to a severe porpoising problem.
With both of their rivals set to be serious contenders for the title this season, Red Bull will have to extract the maximum performance out of the RB19, as well as rely on the talents of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, if they want to stand any chance of retaining their titles for another year.