Lewis Hamilton will “not” have to worry about Max Verstappen this season as Juan Pablo Montoya doesn’t believe Red Bull will come out swinging after Adrian Newey’s recent revelations about their design problems.

Red Bull announced in May last year that Newey would leave the team in early 2025, the design guru stepping back from Formula 1 design duties to “focus on final development and delivery of Red Bull’s first hypercar”, the RB17.

‘Max Verstappen is not going to be Lewis Hamilton’s problem’

Seven races later, with the chasing pack led by McLaren and Ferrari having caught Red Bull on the track, the team introduced the ill-fated floor upgrade that exacerbated the RB20’s balance issues.

Newey said he saw the signs but that nobody at Red Bull took him seriously.

“I think, Red Bull, from what I could see… the 2024 car, and through the very last stages of ’23 as well, I would say, started to become more difficult to drive,” he told Auto Motor und Sport.

“Of course, that suited Max, and he could handle that. It didn’t suit him, but he could handle it. Checo [Sergio Perez] couldn’t.

“It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many other people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about.

“From what I can see from the outside, but I don’t know, the guys at Red Bull – this is no criticism, but I think they just perhaps, through lack of experience, kept going in that same direction, and the problem came more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive.”

Verstappen still managed to wrestle a fourth successive World title, beating Lando Norris to the line, but his 10-race winless streak from Austria to Mexico was his longest run without a victory since 2020.

Given Newey has designed cars that have won 12 Constructors’ Championship titles and 16 Drivers’ titles, Montoya believes the Briton’s words carry weight.

As such he doesn’t believe Red Bull, now with Pierre Waché at the helm, will come out firing this season.

And that’s good news for Lewis Hamilton as the Briton seeks to dethrone Verstappen and win his eighth World title in his first season with Ferrari.

“Max Verstappen is not going to be Lewis’s problem this year,” Montoya told OnlineCassino.com.

“I’d be surprised if Red Bull comes out swinging like the last few years, Adrian Newey came out the other day saying that the problems at Red Bull are not as simple as they think it is.

“It’s really difficult because when you believe what you’re doing is right and all of a sudden things stop working, how far back do you go, and at what point do you go, ‘Is what we’re doing now right or are we still wrong?’

“If you’re saying you’re building the car wrong and you realise what you’re doing is wrong, then how convinced are you that what you’re doing now is completely right?

“At some point, they have just got to go: ‘This is what we believe in, and this is where we’re going to put an effort in, and this is what we’re going to do, and this is what’s going to happen.

“You just start moving sideways or even backwards. If you keep going forward based on the wrong basics you’re never going to get out of the hole.

“That hole can be very deep, that’s the problem.”

Last season Red Bull won the Drivers’ title with Verstappen, the Dutchman claiming nine race wins, but they lost the teams’ trophy to McLaren and slump to third with Ferrari also overhauling them.