The McLaren vs Red Bull Miami mystery: An update shake-up, conspiracy or FIA intervention?

Momentum in the Formula 1 world title fight between McLaren and Red Bull started to swing towards the Woking-based team at the Miami Grand Prix – but all the factors behind why remain unclear

One of the biggest unknowns about the 2024 Formula 1 season is how Red Bull went from crushing the opposition up to the Chinese GP to being on the backfoot since Miami.

Max Verstappen’s victory in Shanghai, his fourth out of five races at the start of this season, came with nearly identical 13-second margins at the front in that weekend’s sprint and main grand prix. The world champion had been pretty much unchallenged up to that point (and would likely have won Australia were it not for his brake problem) and there had been little indication from outside that the RB20 was anything but well clear of the opposition.

But just two weeks later, as F1 returned to action in Miami, Red Bull’s problems suddenly manifested themselves as Verstappen found himself not entirely comfortable with the balance of his car.

It was this which triggered the incident at the chicane where he ran over the cone and that ultimately set in motion the events that handed the race to McLaren’s Lando Norris – whose team had been boosted by the arrival of a major update.

From that moment on, the story of the 2024 season changed. While Red Bull did win again in Imola, Barcelona and Montreal, it never really returned to the level of dominance that it showed before the Hard Rock weekend.

McLaren’s major car revamp for that event certainly explains a lot about its own step forward, but that others were also all suddenly able to threaten Red Bull, having not been able to do so beforehand, is harder to understand.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, leads Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

It was not just that McLaren improved; other did too and it seems that Red Bull went backwards and has not recovered since.

Speaking to Motorsport.com about the situation, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said there was no clear answer from his squad about why things were so different from that weekend.

“If you were sceptic, you’d say something’s changed because we went from winning races as a canter,” he said. “I was getting grief from Stefano [Domenicali] every weekend that the TV figures are dwindling because we’re set for another year of Max Verstappen and Red Bull dominance. There was a lot of pressure coming, saying: ‘Stop winning races by 20 seconds!’

“If one was a sceptic and somewhat paranoid, you say something’s changed. Because even when we’ve gone back to the configuration of the car that, for example, we had in China, we still have some of the same issues that we have experienced.

“But, in saying that, it changed for everybody, potentially. But I’ve never in a season seen a swing so exaggerated. Obviously we have to get on top of that. We have to understand it.”