The 2024 Formula 1 season was an exercise in damage mitigation on the part of Red Bull Racing — the once-dominant team that suddenly began to flounder.

Max Verstappen was able to secure his fourth consecutive World Championship despite the ongoing concerns. And, according to De Telegraaf, Verstappen was also integral in the evolution of the RB20.

Max Verstappen on the not “quite 100 percent ” season

While the on-track performance by Red Bull teammates Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez was strong at the start of 2024, battles were raging off the track.

Team boss Christian Horner was accused of acting inappropriately to a coworker, and as the saga continued, confidential data about the situation be leaked to the media.

On top of that came rumors that Verstappen might leave the team if Helmut Marko were fired, as Marko was one of the people suspected of information leaks — as was Verstappen’s father, Jos.

Max Verstappen won four of the first five races in 2024, but in Miami, things changed. McLaren arrived with an impressive upgrade package, and Lando Norris secured his first race win.

Other teams followed McLaren’s example, but Red Bull’s mid-season upgrades failed to counter those brought by the competition. It all culminated in Verstappen referring to his car as a “monster” at Monza.

In an interview with De Telegraaf, Verstappen pinpointed just how critical Monza was to the evolution of the team — and how it proved that the team wasn’t ready to evolve.

“All plans for new parts that were to come after that could go in the bin,” Verstappen told De Telegraaf, translated into English.

“The team basically started all over again after that. They couldn’t find the exact problem before that.”

That weekend in Italy, Verstappen pored over Red Bull data, trying to find out what was going wrong.

“I saw some graphs at one point when we were looking at the data. I saw certain aerodynamic shifts in how we entered the corners, turned in and also in terms of ride heights. Different from the car from the year before,” he explained.

“I said: ‘Hey, it’s very clear that this and this is the problem, isn’t it?’

“And that was right, I heard.”

Verstappen explained that he’d never seen those specific graphs before that weekend in Monza, but once he did, the trajectory of the team became clear.

“I said then that it was clear what we had to work on, because of course the engineers know exactly what had been changed compared to the car from last year,” he said.

“And at the beginning of last season we were still winning our races convincingly, but I already felt that the balance of the car didn’t feel the way I wanted it to. But then we still had a big lead over other teams, who maybe hadn’t had a very good winter.”

Verstappen didn’t elaborate on the specific data points that looked out of order. However, if you take a look at his results after Monza, the team looked to be returning to a more competitive form that saw Verstappen win two races after a massive run of losses.

He took victories in Brazil and Qatar, and also secured his fourth championship in Las Vegas. Clearly, something had changed.

The good news for Red Bull is that it discovered the issue and was able to start solving the problem before the 2025 season kicked off in earnest. However, now that other teams have found the formula for success, we may very well have a deeply competitive year on our hands.